The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously upheld a law to shut down TikTok, which will be enforced starting Sunday unless the hugely popular video-sharing app is sold by its China-based parent company ByteDance. Justices ruled that national security risks posed by the platform’s ties to China trumped First Amendment concerns about limiting users’ free speech.

A ByteDance sale does not appear imminent. While tech industry sources say the TikTok app won’t disappear from existing users’ phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. The issue is sticky for the incoming administration. National Security Adviser-designee Mike Waltz said ahead of the Supreme Court ruling that Mr. Trump is looking at ways to prevent a TikTok shutdown.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that new details of Chinese Community Party influence over ByteDance came out in a civil suit in New York by a former TikTok executive, Katie Purvis, who has sued both TikTok and its China-based owner for unlawful termination. Ms. Purvis, a marketing manager, said she was forced to abide by Chinese laws and “the socialist system” directed by communist ideology as a condition of her job.

We asked Rand Waldron, vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure product development and a former top FBI official, on the latest Threat Status Weekly Podcast whether the impact being had by AI on national security is real or overblown. Here’s how he responded: “We are seeing it now. Like, now now. Yesterday, six months ago, maybe not 18 months ago, but we are seeing it now. …This is going to be a trend that looks like a hockey stick.”

“If you look at some of the open source stuff of what’s going on with Israel and Gaza, and some of the work that Israel is doing — and there’s a great book written by an Israeli general called the ‘Human-Machine Team’ that covers some of this — … some of what’s going on in Ukraine, where they’ve taken the phones, devices that we all have, and they’re using them to listen to the sounds of drones so that they can track drones traveling over the battlefield — that is not just static analysis, that is AI machine learning in the system,” Mr. Waldron said.

“It’s only going to grow,” he said on the podcast that dropped this morning. “It is only going to grow, from occasional niche things … to everything, and any nation that isn’t on that innovation pipeline is going to find themselves swamped by it.” 

Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio warned during his confirmation hearing this week that Chinese port facilities at either end of the Panama Canal pose a threat to U.S. national security and could be used by Beijing in a crisis to shut down military shipping.

Mr. Rubio recalled former U.S. Southern Command chief, Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, telling him she has flown over the canal and identified the Chinese civilian ports as “dual-use facilities that in a moment of conflict could be weaponized.” He emphasized that past comments by Mr. Trump on the need to restore U.S. control over the canal are serious and that the Chinese port presence means the canal is no longer in the Panamanian government’s control.

Sources tell Threat Status Mr. Rubio’s statements were closely watched by Chinese Communist Party leaders. China’s Foreign Ministry has not yet responded, but Beijing went to great lengths Thursday to counter a separate warning by Mr. Rubio that China will pay a high price if it invades Taiwan. A ministry spokesperson told reporters in Beijing that “Taiwan is part of China, and the Taiwan question is purely China’s internal affair, which brooks no foreign interference.”

Alignment with Russia has committed a heavily sanctioned North Korea to “international pariah status with no hope of international development assistance,” writes Joseph R. DeTrani, a former member of the Senior Intelligence Service of the CIA and a contributor to Threat Status.

“This is not what Mr. Kim wants. His father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, would expect more from Mr. Kim,” writes Mr. DeTrani of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. “Hopefully, the Trump administration will make North Korea a priority issue.”

Mr. Trump can “use his close personal relationship with Mr. Kim to re-engage with North Korea, with the immediate prospect of sanctions relief and security assurances, in return for a halt to nuclear tests,  missile launches and the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons,” he writes. “North Korea’s goal will be a normal relationship with the U.S. Our goal should be complete and verifiable denuclearization, something that will require years to accomplish.”

Maybe you were surprised to learn that the New Year’s morning Islamic terrorist massacre in New Orleans was committed by a Texas-born U.S. Army veteran who embraced ISIS ideology, but “you shouldn’t be,” writes Irit Tratt, who was co-chair of the Trump 47 National Women’s Leadership Coalition.

“You probably don’t even know that a Cape Cod man died after setting himself on fire near the Israeli consulate in Boston this past Sept. 11, having released a video saying, ‘We are slaves to capitalism … Free Palestine,’” writes Ms. Tratt. “But that shouldn’t surprise you either. These are not random events. They are the result of a long-running Islamist campaign to radicalize Americans and undermine our country.”

• Jan. 22 — Saving Georgian Democracy: A Conversation with President Salome Zourabichvili, American Enterprise Institute

• Jan. 22 — Naval Competition in the Indian Ocean Region, Stimson Center

• Jan. 22 — Strategic Competition in the Second Trump Administration,  Wilson Center

• Jan. 23 — 2025 Defense R&D Summit, Potomac Officers Club 

• Jan. 24 — Project on Nuclear Issues live debate: AI integration in U.S. Nuclear Command, Control and Communications, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Jan. 28 — The North Caucasus and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Wilson Center

• Feb. 10-11 — Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, Government of France