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U.S. Launches Retaliatory Airstrike after Drone Attack in Syria; TikTok CEO Denies Any Link to Chinese Communist Party; At Least 80 Arrested as French Protests Turn Violent; Israel Passes Law Shielding Netanyahu from Being Removed as Prime Minister; Investigating Russia's Denial of Forced Child Deportations; Inside Douyin: China's Own Version of TikTok; Biden to Meet with Trudeau in Canada. Aired 12-12:45a ET
Aired March 24, 2023 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: History swirls around him, Benjamin Netanyahu softens his tone but ramps up his efforts to push on with his Orwellian-titled judicial reform.
[00:00:11]
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with John Vause.
VAUSE: Thanks for being with us.
We'll have those stories in a moment, but first the U.S. has launched a retaliatory airstrike after a deadly attack on U.S. personnel in Syria. The Pentagon says the precision strike hit a group affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Eastern Syria.
The move came after Thursday's drone attack targeted a facility used by U.S. personnel in Northeastern Syria, killing a U.S. contractor and wounding six other Americans.
The Pentagon says U.S. intelligence believes the drone was of Iranian origin.
Let's bring in CNN's Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann on the line with us at this late hour. What details do we know at this point, Oren?
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (via phone): John, all this played out on Thursday afternoon, Syria time, so fairly early Thursday morning, our time here, when the Pentagon says a one-way drone, essentially a suicide drone, carried out an attack in Hasakah, Syria -- that's far Northeast Syria -- targeting U.S. personnel there.
According to the Pentagon, one U.S. contractor, an American citizen, was killed in the attack. Five U.S. service members and another contractor were wounded in that drone attack. According to the Pentagon, two of the wounded service members were treated at the site, while three others, as well as the contractor who was injured, had to be rushed to medical facilities in Iraq. The Pentagon says the drone is likely of Iranian origin, which
suggests it would be an Iranian proxy in the region that carried out this attack, and that's why we see the follow on action from the United States carrying out what it calls a precision strike, a proportionate attack against forces affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
According to a Pentagon statement, the U.S., quote, "took proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties."
General Eric Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said if there were further Iranian attacks on U.S. forces, there might be further U.S. responses and still short statement this evening, he said, "We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks."
In terms of how frequently this happened, in fact, Kurilla again, the commander of U.S. Central Command, testified just earlier today that there have been 78 rocket attacks or UAV attacks against U.S. forces in Syria just the beginning of 2021 by his count, John average averages out to nearly one attack every 10 days, but not all of them have this sort of tragic result.
VAUSE: Oren, thank you. Oren Liebermann, CNN Pentagon correspondent, on the line there with late details of that U.S. strike in Syria. Thank you, Oren.
TikTok's future in the U.S. appears to be more uncertain than ever, despite or perhaps because of, the company's CEO appearing before lawmakers to try and calm concerns the Chinese-owned app is a threat to U.S. national security.
Shou Zi Chew was constantly interrupted by lawmakers from both parties. His answers, they said, were evasive and the app harmful to children. One congressman called it a cancer, amid warnings that it was a threat to national security, potentially collecting data and spying on Americans for China.
Many in Congress and the Biden administration are pushing to ban the app in the U.S.
TikTok's CEO denied any link to the Chinese government and said he's seen no evidence that Beijing has access to user data. But his words and his promises did little to calm those concerns.
CNN's Natasha Bertrand has our report.
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NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lawmakers grilling the CEO of TikTok today, accusing the social media company of spying on Americans for China.
REP. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS (R-WA): TikTok surveils us all, and the Chinese Communist Party is able to use this as a tool to manipulate America as a whole. Your platform should be banned.
I expect today you'll say anything to avoid this outcome.
BERTRAND (voice-over): The CEO, Shou Chew, rejecting claims that Beijing has any control over TikTok through its Chinese parent company ByteDance and insisting that Americans' data is now largely stored on U.S. soil.
REP. BOB LATTA (R-OH): Do any ByteDance employees in China, including engineers, currently have access to U.S. data?
SHOU CHEW, CEO, TIKTOK: Congressman, I would appreciate -- This is a complex topic. Today, all data, by default --
LATTA: It's not that complex. Yes or no? Do they have access to user data?
CHEW: We have -- after Project Texas is done, the answer is no.
BERTRAND (voice-over): Project Texas is TikTok's name for its ongoing effort to move all U.S. data onto servers hosted by the American company Oracle, which is based in Texas.
That defense, however, falling on deaf ears.
CHEW: -- have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data. They have never asked us. We have not provided.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I find that actually preposterous.
REP. JAY OBERNOLTE (R-CA): I don't believe that it is technically possible to accomplish what TikTok says it will accomplish through Project Texas.
BERTRAND (voice-over): Lawmakers provided no evidence that the Chinese government has used the app to surveil Americans, but they repeatedly pointed to an episode from last year when four TikTok employees, including two based in China, were fired after improperly accessing journalist data.
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CHEW: We do not condone the effort by certain former employees to access U.S. TikTok user data in an attempt to identify the source of leaked confidential information.
BERTRAND (voice-over): Even so, governments around the world are moving to ban the app, including the Biden administration, which now prohibits TikTok on federal devices.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for the app to, quote, "be ended" in a separate hearing on Thursday.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it a threat to the United States security?
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I believe that it is, yes. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And shouldn't a threat to United States security be
banned?
BLINKEN: It should be ended one way or another, and there are different ways of doing that.
BERTRAND (voice-over): The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee also hinting that the U.S. knows more about TikTok's risks than has been publicly revealed.
SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): One of the things that my legislation would do is require the intelligence community to declassify as much information as possible, so it's not don't just trust the government.
BERTRAND: Now the big question coming out of this hearing is whether the U.S. is going to try to ban TikTok outright. Currently, it is only banned on U.S. government devices.
And of course, we will be watching to see whether ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, actually moves to sell its stake in TikTok, thereby alleviating the U.S. concerns about TikTok's ties to China.
But we should note that after this hearing, TikTok also released a statement saying that, while Shou, the TikTok CEO, tried to answer lawmakers' questions today and alleviate their concerns about any potential national security risk posed by TikTok, the hearing was dominated by, quote, "political grandstanding."
BERTRAND: Natasha Bertrand, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Julia Angwin is an investigative journalist and contributing opinion writer for "The New York Times." She's also the founder of "The Markup," an outlet that investigates the impacts of technology on
society.
Thanks for being with us, Julia. It's good to see you.
JULIA ANGWIN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: It's great to be here.
VAUSE: OK, so this was one of those congressional hearings when, you know, the farmer and the rancher can be friends; Republicans and Democrats can put their animosity for one another on hold and beat up on a third party, like the CEO of TikTok.
And clearly, Chinese-owned TikTok is just un-American. Here's Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RODGERS: We do not trust TikTok will ever embrace American values. Values for freedom, human rights and innovation.
TikTok has repeatedly chosen the path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation. Your platform should be banned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: "Embracing American values." Is this a new litmus test, I guess, for foreign companies to be allowed access to the U.S. market?
But did it seem to you that lawmakers were having kind of a trouble nailing down their security concerns, beyond China being China?
ANGWIN: I mean, that's such a great point, because, as actually, the TikTok CEO said, he said, You're raising a lot of potential harms here. But you haven't actually shown any evidence.
And when he didn't say, but I will say, is that the reality is we've already seen evidence of harms from the U.S.-based social media giants, right? We have seen genocide enabled by Facebook. We have seen teen girls' body image hurt by Instagram's policies, as revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
We've seen, at Twitter, internal employees who were actually working for the Saudi government spying on dissidents, using their access to data.
So we've actually seen harm at all of these platforms that is very similar to what TikTok is being accused of.
And there's no question that TikTok could obviously do all of these things, too. But we haven't actually seen it happening.
VAUSE: I guess the sort of the overall overriding concern here is that what will happen to user data, especially since Chinese-owned tech companies are legally obligated to hand over all user data, if requested by the Chinese government.
Here's TikTok's CEO. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHEW: Our approach has never been to dismiss or trivialize any of these concerns. We have addressed them with real action.
The bottom line is this. American data stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. We call this initiative Project Texas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Call it what you want, but it's not 100 percent lock in the bank, throw away the key kind of guarantee, though, that user data won't be handed over to Beijing. Someone somewhere within the company can still do it.
ANGWIN: Yes. I mean, the thing that TikTok has been proposing, this Project Texas -- and they've been working on it for quite some time. And today was the first time that we really saw it get tested, right, that he was asked a lot of hard questions about Project Texas, and not all of the answers were satisfactory.
So to be clear, it's a pretty good idea to firewall the U.S. data and not let China have access to it. But the devil is in the details.
And one thing that he mentioned that hadn't been clear before, was that Project Texas was only about data they collect from now going forward. But actually, the data they collected in the past is still there and is not sequestered. And there's, like, a different plan for that, that hasn't been fully fleshed out.
So there's a lot of reasons why the lawmakers have a right to be questioning Project Texas.
VAUSE: Well, on that plan, Senator Marco Rubio told "The New York Post," "Even if TikTok was divested from ByteDance, Chinese law doesn't allow the algorithm to be exported. TikTok will try to confuse people, but we have multiple reports that people are saying all the data goes to China. Even if they move all the data to Oracle, engineers in China would still need access to the algorithm and the data."
It seems, regardless of all the safeguards that TikTok is putting in place, or trying to implement, there is still this element of "trust us," like it is pretty much for every other tech giant.
ANGWIN: Well, the reason that it's a "trust us" environment is because the U.S. has passed no laws to protect data privacy, unlike almost every other nation in the world. So we don't have a federal comprehensive privacy law that sets a bare minimum standard for how data should be treated.
And we also have not followed the lead of Europe, which has actually put in place laws that are going in effect this year that would require tech companies to mitigate harms enabled by their algorithms.
So we don't have algorithmic oversight. We don't have data oversight. And so it's a wild West. And the fact is that TikTok has actually proposed that its algorithm would be inspected by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS.
And so they said that, under their plan, they would allow for this algorithm to be inspected.
Now once again, the devil's in the details, whether that inspection would actually show and be able to mitigate harm. It's not clear, but it is an offer to put itself under state control.
VAUSE: Yes, and as an offer never made, I believe by Google or Facebook or any other big tech giants out there.
Julia, thanks so much for being with us. It's very much appreciated.
ANGWIN: Thank you.
VAUSE: French President Emmanuel Macron is now embroiled in perhaps the most volatile political crisis of his career, and it's unlikely to end any time soon.
By rolling nationwide protests since the beginning of the year when Emmanuel Macron announced plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Thursday saw the ninth day of coordinated industrial action and protests. According to government estimates, more than a million people joined marches and protests nationwide. They were peaceful, but a few saw violent clashes. At least 80 people were arrested.
We get the latest now from CNN's Melissa Bell in Paris.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More determined than ever, they set off for a ninth official day of protest after a week of unplanned ones.
The scuffles almost nightly ever since the French government announced it would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote.
The government narrowly surviving two no-confidence votes on Monday, but determined nonetheless.
EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translator): We will not tolerate any flare-ups. We will make sure that life is as normal as possible, in spite of those who are blocking normal life.
The very next morning, normal life blocked from Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport to the country's oil refineries and depots.
Weeks of strikes becoming painfully obvious at gas stations and on the increasingly smelly streets of Paris.
The numbers on the streets on Thursday, also aimed at getting the government to buckle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Historically, French people are always protesting for a good social system. This's why we have a good social system.
BELL (voice-over): A battle of wills, neither side seems prepared to back down from.
Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Dominic Thomas is European affairs commentator, and he joins us this hour from Los Angeles.
Dominic, I have a few communication problems right now, but we're going to muddle on through anyway. I hope you can hear me.
DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Yes.
VAUSE: There were months of protests leading up to Emmanuel Macron's TV interview on Wednesday. And as the government pushes on with this plan, there was always going to be more and more protests.
But to have more than a million people on the streets on Thursday. Three million, according to one of the bigger labor unions; more than 100,000 in Paris. I wonder if Macron's demeanor and defiance during that interview were kind of like a multiplier effect.
THOMAS: Yes, John. I think it absolutely was. I mean, we know that this has been building. I mean, going back to the era before COVID, even, with the legacy of the -- of the yellow jackets.
Then the 2022 election, where he lost his majority.
[00:15:02]
So he knew that this kind of controversial legislation was going to be an uphill battle.
And in that interview Wednesday, he showed absolutely no empathy. He just stuck to his economic argument and to the argument that this was a necessary -- that it was necessary, that it was good for the country. In other words, that he knows best.
And ultimately, what we're seeing from the street is that people disagree with that. And ultimately, if he went into this with an opposition that was not united, now, what we can see is an opposition that is completely united, not so much against his reforms, but actually against Emmanuel Macron as a president, John.
VAUSE: Yes. And the cities where the violence actually erupted, there are accusations of police brutality. I want you to delete -- listen to the leader of the French Communist Party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FABIEN ROUSSEL, FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY LEADER (through translator): In a couple of days, we have gone from the debate on pensions to violence. In a couple of days, we have gone from peaceful demonstrations to baton blows. We have gone from mobilizations inside companies to broken jaws.
This is extremely serious, and the president is behaving like a thug in the republic. This is why we are calling to continue the movement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: You have Macron the thug. Others have compared Macron to King Louis XIV, the Sun King, who was beheaded. Many protesters warning Macron could suffer the same fate.
Is France heading towards sort of widespread civil unrest?
THOMAS: Well, I mean, there's a lot of that. Obviously, that you know, the indicators are there, John.
I mean, you know, what's interesting is, of course, they know that Emmanuel Macron's term will end in 2027. I mean, that may see -- seem a long way off, but ultimately, what's I think, ironic about the situation is that the upper House, the Senate, voted in favor of this -- of these reforms.
It was the lower House where Emmanuel Macron was unable to get the support that he needed and, ultimately, then pushed it through with Article 49.3.
But then, ultimately, his government then survived two votes of no confidence. Right? So it's an interesting kind of situation.
Now we're in a semi-presidential constitutional republic here, and it's really less the office of the president that's at risk. It's his government.
But at the end of the day, John if Emmanuel Macron was to push for legislative elections, I'm not thinking that the configuration in Parliament and would change in any way in his favor.
And even if he was to reshuffle his cabinet or ultimately oust his prime minister, I don't see a president that is willing here to back down on his legislative agenda.
And at the end of the day, that will therefore mean that the focus will remain on him and on opposition to his -- to his legislative agenda, John.
VAUSE: Well, for Macron, it seems a question of stay the course. Here's part of that interview from Wednesday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MACRON (through translator): I say this in all responsibility. I'm not wishing to get reelected. I cannot be, as said in the Constitution. But between the short-term polls and the general interests of the country, I choose the general interests. And if in the end, I have to endure unpopularity today, I will endure it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: But unions and the opposition groups may be just as or more determined than Macron is. So if that's the case, is this now just a test of wills? And if it is, how will this all play out in the weeks ahead?
THOMAS: Yes, well, let's just speculate, John, here on that.
I mean, of course, this situation ultimately in the end will not just be about Emmanuel Macron. We can look to history. Jacques Chirac in 1995 backed down on pension reform.
Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010 raised the age from 60 to 62; ultimately, was not re-elected. Now, as we just said, Emmanuel Macron won't be running again. But even
if the tensions on the street do fizzle out, the fact remains that moving forward, every single legislative item will reignite these kinds of tension.
So invariably, we're looking at different forms of economic and political and paralysis.
I think what's going to be interesting and probably a couple of things we need to look at. First of all, what actually continues to happen on the street and the sort of the influence of and of the unions here in this particular process.
But I think we also need to start looking to Emmanuel Macron's own party, to his cabinet, and to those elected representatives of his movement and office party who are going to become -- going to come under increasing pressure from their own constituents moving forward.
And then ultimately, what people in his party will be arguing is that they will have to be a candidate in 2027. Is it worth the risk of this particular party being essentially obliterated, because of the way it's handled this?
Or is there an opportunity here to kind of go about rebuilding by 2027. And that may require Emanual Macron to back down in order to mitigate that kind of damage.
But until he does, there's no way in which these kinds of tensions are going to dissolve, and we're just going to see it growing exponentially, John.
VAUSE: Yes, I would say it's been growing for so far in that case. Yes, it will continue to grow. Dominic, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it.
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THOMAS: Thank you, John.
VAUSE: The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, doubling down on his government's plans to overhaul the judiciary, despite weeks of protests.
On Thursday, the Knesset passed a new law which shields the prime minister from being removed from office. The bill says only the prime minister himself or supermajorities in both the cabinet and parliament can declare the leader unfit.
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(CHANTING)
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VAUSE: Critics have slammed this bill. Protesters are outraged by it and with Mr. Netanyahu's plans to weaken the judiciary, as well. CNN's Hadas Gold has the latest from Jerusalem.
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HADAS GOLD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is pushing forward with his planned judicial overhaul that would give the Israeli parliament power over the supreme court, despite weeks of massive protests and concerns from his own defense minister over what the reforms would do to national security.
On Thursday afternoon, reports began to emerge that the Israeli defense minister, who is a member of Netanyahu's own political party, was going to give a speech calling on the legislation to be halted because of what it would do to Israeli security.
Already, hundreds of elite military reservists have announced that they would not answer the call to serve if the overhaul passed.
Now such a speech by the defense minister would have been a major, major blow to Netanyahu politically, who has long touted that he is strong on national security. But instead, Netanyahu gave a speech announcing that, while he understands the fears of the opponents to the reform, and that he pledges to reach a solution somehow, that the legislative process of these reforms will continue.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We are determined to fix, to advance with this possibility that democratic reform that will bring back balance between the branches.
And I remind you, we dealt with one issue only out of many that we have not yet discussed.
GOLD: Netanyahu also vowed that the parliament would not be able to overturn every single court decision and vowed that the rights of all citizens, including minorities, would be protected.
He also called on the opposition to negotiate, although the opposition has refused to do so, unless they say the legislative process is stopped.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid slammed Netanyahu's speech, telling Netanyahu to stop playing the victim and take responsibility, calling on him to, quote, listen to the hundreds of thousands of patriots who have taken to the streets. Listen to the minister of defense to the economist and to the security officials.
Protest leaders, meanwhile, called it a bizarre show of a dictator in the making, and vowed that the protests, now in their 12th week will intensify.
Hadas Gold, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN, an abandoned Ukrainian orphanage now the focus of a CNN investigation into what happened here before the children were taken.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Children who stayed here were under 5 years old, mostly. This orphanage had more than 40 children here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:25:04]
VAUSE: Russia's all-out efforts to take the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut appears to have peaked; it may soon come to an end, opening the way for a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUNITIONS FIRING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: This coming from a senior Ukrainian general, saying Russian forces in Bakhmut have taken heavy casualties in recent months, but Ukraine warns Russia is still mounting hundreds of attacks every day across the Eastern front line, including in Bakhmut.
And the leader of the Wagner mercenaries says Moscow can now deploy more heavy weapons, because the weather is getting warmer, which means the ground is getting tougher and harder.
Meantime, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited an energy facility in Kherson region on Thursday. He also addressed the European Council from a train, saying Ukraine could -- could -- win the war this year under certain conditions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): If there is no delay or stagnation in our cooperation, if our efforts are decisively direct towards Ukraine's victory, then the victory will be already this year. Time matters. Not only months and weeks, but also days. The faster we act together, the more lives we save.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The Kremlin has warned any attempt to arrest President Vladimir Putin abroad would lead to another war.
A top Russian security officials spelled that out, point blank.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DMITRY MEDVEDEV, DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, RUSSIAN SECURITY COUNCIL (through translator): Just imagine. Clearly, such a situation is never going to happen. But still, let's imagine that has happened. The incumbent head of a nuclear country arrives in, say, Germany and is arrested. What does it mean? A declaration of war against Russia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin last week over an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia. That means he could be arrested in any country that signed the so-called Rome Statute, which created the ICC.
But Hungary is making it clear it won't happen there. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff says there's no basis in Hungarian law to arrest Putin.
Orban has been the Kremlin's closest ally in the E.U.
Moscow is not denying that some Ukrainian children have actually been taken to Russia, but it describes the move as a humanitarian gesture, not forced deportation. CNN's David McKenzie went to an orphanage in Southern Ukraine. Here's his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Approaching the Southern front line in Kherson. In the liberated city, many have fled. It's deceptively quiet. Until the relentless terror: the often indiscriminate, almost daily Russian shelling.
We've come to investigate a very deliberate horror of the Russian occupation.
MCKENZIE: So the children who stayed here were under 5 years old, mostly. This orphanage had more than 40 children here.
MCKENZIE (voice-over): Elena was a nurse here for 17 years. Not a single child is left.
"I feel emptiness, emptiness. Everything has just stopped," she says. "The children had everything. They were so happy. The children were happy."
Now it's just silence. And small reminders of them. Their names still on each locker,
The Kherson Children's Home is now a crime scene.
"They warned us to collect their clothes," says Elena. "The Russians and collaborators called in the evening and said to prepare the children for the morning. The busses arrived at 8."
The heartbreaking scenes captured for Russian propaganda, shared on a Russian M.P.'s Telegram channel. The bewildered children, taken from their beloved nurses in October, transported to Russian-occupied Crimea or Russia itself, say Ukrainian investigators.
But instead of hiding this alleged war crime, Russians advertised it.
"Children will be taken to safe conditions in Crimea," he says. "I'll definitely go and visit."
Investigators said was part of a premeditated Russian mission to take Ukrainian children. They even targeted hospitals.
MCKENZIE: There was a lot of pressure by the Russians to take these children. Weren't you afraid?
"It was scary. Very, very scary. So much pressure," says Orla Piliasca (ph). "Twice a day, they demanded we show them lists of the kids to take to Russia."
So Orla (ph) and her team came up with an extraordinary deception. They hid orphans in the ICU, and they forged medical assessments, saying healthy children were severely sick. They even faked an emergency ventilation, she says.
"We understood that the Russians and collaborators would not forgive us," she says. "We knew there would be serious retribution. We understood this." But they took the risks and managed to save children.
[00:30:08]
And a critical care nurse took it a step further. Tatiana (ph) says she fell in love with one of the orphaned children. She worked desperately to keep the child off the list.
MCKENZIE: How are you?
MCKENZIE (voice-over): Now, she's adopting Kira (ph).
MCKENZIE: Nice to meet you.
MCKENZIE (voice-over): We met them at home: a Ukrainian mom with her treasured Ukrainian child.
TATIANA (PH), CRITICAL CARE NURSE: Kira (ph).
MCKENZIE (voice-over): Kira (ph) is almost ready to walk.
MCKENZIE: What does she mean to you?
TATIANA (ph): Kira.
"She means everything to me," says Tatiana (ph). "I don't even know. To be honest, I can't imagine my life without Kira."
This awful war has given her a precious gift.
David McKenzie, CNN, Kherson.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: When we come back, what's good for the goose, as they say. Beijing has slammed the white House for considering a ban on Chinese- owned TikTok, but the app isn't even allowed on Chinese soil. Ahead, a look at China's own heavily-censored version of TikTok.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Welcome back, everyone. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
U.S. lawmakers are accusing TikTok of threatening national security and harming children's mental health. Many say the popular social media app should be banned altogether.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before a House committee for more than five hours on Thursday, but lawmakers had little patience for his testimony, claiming the app encourages drug use, eating disorders, sexual exploitation.
They also say the Chinese government is using the technology to harvest data on Americans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RODGERS: To the American people watching today, hear this. TikTok is a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on you, manipulate what you see, and exploit for future generations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: TikTok's CEO denied all that and said there's no connection to the Chinese government; and said Beijing had never asked for Americans' data. He said the company is moving that data to U.S. soil, stored by an American company overseen by American personnel.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHEW: We have heard important concerns about the potential for unwanted foreign access to U.S. data and potential manipulation of the TikTok U.S. ecosystem.
Our approach has never been to dismiss or trivialize any of these concerns.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: TikTok has a huge following. It's very popular all around the world. But not in China. That's because it's banned. Instead mainland China gets a heavily-censored version with a different name.
[00:35:09]
CNN's Selina Wang has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SELINA WANG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pressure is building again in Washington to ban TikTok, all because it's owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance. In China, TikTok is banned. In fact, it never existed. Instead there's a separate version of ByteDance's app in China, called Douyin.
Boasting more than 600 million daily active users, Douyin was already a viral sensation in China before TikTok launched overseas.
WANG: So I've got TikTok pulled up on my U.S. phone and Douyin on this China phone. They've got very similar homepages and interfaces. The only reason why I can access TikTok here in Beijing is because this phone has got an overseas sim card in it and a VPN to get around China's internet firewall.
WANG (voice-over): But Douyin has some more sophisticated features, especially in live streaming and eCommerce. And Douyin users under 14 can only use the app for 40 minutes a day and see kid-safe content.
WANG: Plus, Douyin automatically puts on this heavy beauty filter when I opened up this camera function.
Media is heavily censored in China. So if I type in a topic sensitive to the Chinese government on doing, say, like Tiananmen, 1989, nothing pops up and I get a text that says no search results available.
Versus on TikTok, you'll see that a bunch of videos pop up about the massacre.
WANG (voice-over): One of Washington's concerns is that, because of its Chinese ownership, Beijing could use its propaganda and censorship methods on TikTok, too.
The other fear is that TikTok could be forced to hand over data to the Chinese government.
But security experts say the national security risks are hypothetical at best. Beijing says the U.S. government has been abusing state power to suppress other countries' companies.
But the irony is that China has outright blocked countless foreign websites and apps, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix and more. On doing. Chinese state media has been sharing TikTok videos from angry Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Explain it to me, Joe. Why the sudden move to ban TikTok? Joe, if the Chinese want our data, they could just buy the data on the free market that we love so much.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe Biden, I am 80 years old and not a teenager. There are quite a few million people on TikTok who are not going to vote for you if you ban this app.
WANG (voice-over): Meanwhile, nationalistic influencers on Douyin are accusing the U.S. government of using national security as an excuse to crack down on TikTok because of America's fears of China.
But it remains to be seen if TikTok can convince Washington that it poses no threat. Selina Wang, CNN, Beijing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: When we come back, when neighbors come a-calling. U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Justin Trudeau, face to face for talks on a lot of things, including China and foreign interference.
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VAUSE: One of the world's most wanted fugitives has been arrested in Montenegro. South Korean national Do Kwon was detained at the airport carrying fake documents.
He was a crypto developer accused of defrauding investors and causing more than $40 billion in losses. He founded blockchain platform terra form labs and developed two cryptocurrencies, which shook world markets when they failed last year.
Kwon is wanted by multiple countries, including the United States.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tells CNN there is, quote, "a significant threat of foreign interference," unquote, from nations like China.
He echoed concerns that Beijing could use TikTok as a tool for misinformation campaigns and other threats to Canadian democracy.
Trudeau's comments come ahead of a much-anticipated visit from the U.S. president. Joe Biden arrived in Ottawa a few hours ago alongside the first lady.
CNN's Paula Newton, has details.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is not an exaggeration to say that Canada and the United States, two of the closest allies that you will find in the world.
Having said that, President Joe Biden and prime minister Justin Trudeau do have policy disagreements are going to try and iron out some of those over the next few hours . Key here, though, is the United States wanting Canada to step up when it comes to defense spending.
As the United States has made clear, this is not the same geopolitical reality that it was before Russia invaded Ukraine, and they are looking to Canada to do its part.
Also top of mind, though, is China and what both countries call a more aggressive posture from that country. Chinese interference has been top of mind in Canada, and I want you to listen now to my interview with Justin Trudeau just hours before he met with Joe Biden. Take a listen on China.
On China, we've seen balloons in the air over Canada. We've seen buoys in the arctic. What do you think are the Chinese motives in those issues, specifically. And what do you hope to learn from the Chinese balloon now in U.S. hands?
JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think one of the things we have to remember is China is the second largest economy in the world and continues to grow. We are going to have to, in some circumstances, engage constructively with China, like we did around the conference on biodiversity that we co-hosted with them in Montreal. There's issues around climate change that we should be working as a world together.
There's other places where we're going to have to be stiff competition to China in terms of market access, in terms of investments in the global South. We need to be able to show that the West and democracies are there to make those investments, and they're competitive to China.
But there are also areas in which we're going to have to directly challenge China, whether it's on human rights, whether it's on security behaviors, whether it's on cyberattacks or concerns like that. We are going to have to continue to be wide-eyed and clear about the threat that China poses and wants to pose to the stability of our democracies.
NEWTON: Both the president and prime minister, though, do intend to make news during this visit, and one of them has to do with irregular migration. A hot topic in the hemisphere, it seems that there is a
deal for Canada to take in migrants legally from the United States, to try and shoulder some of the burden of the great migration going on now in the Southern Hemisphere.
Canada has been having trouble with irregular migrants, those across at illegal border points, coming into Canada. And as those numbers spike, they wanted the United States to be able to close its side of the border. But in exchange, Canada has now agreed to take in migrants directly from the United States.
Paula Newton, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: I'm John Vause. Back at the top of the hour with more CNN NEWSROOM, but first WORLD SPORT starts after the break.
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(WORLD SPORT)
