FBI director says agency is sharing intelligence to prevent violence on college campuses over Israel-Hamas war
The FBI is coordinating with college campuses to make them aware of antisemitic threats and possible violence in connection with the ongoing wave of protests over the Israel-Hamas war, FBI Director Christopher Wray told NBC News' Lester Holt in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
He said the FBI is “keenly focused on working with state and local law enforcement, campus law enforcement and others to try to make sure that we stay ahead” of any threats of violence.
Wray said the FBI doesn’t monitor protests, “but we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence with campuses, with state and local law enforcement.”
In a wide-ranging interview slated to air on "NBC Nightly News," he spoke expansively about what he views as the national security threat from TikTok, the popular social media platform owned by a Chinese company. Congress is moving toward passing legislation requiring that company, ByteDance, to divest itself of TikTok.
Asked to describe the real-world threat from TikTok, Wray said, using an acronym to refer to the Chinese Communist Party, that national security officials are concerned it provides Chinese intelligence services with “the ability to collect the data, the ability to control the recommendation algorithm, which means the ability to push CCP narratives, pro-CCP narratives, downplay criticism of the Chinese government, in effect, enlist millions of users as unwitting advocates of CCP propaganda.”
He added that the Chinese government also has “the ability to control the software, which gives the opportunity to technically compromise the devices, the phones, millions and millions of phones.”
Asked what he would say to the millions of people in the United States who regularly use TikTok for business or pleasure and simply don’t care about the perceived risks, Wray said, "My message is, you need to take into account who the Chinese government is, who the Chinese Communist Party is."
