Emily Baker-White with Steve Scher

After working within big tech companies’ policy departments, Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative journalist Emily Baker-White has now focused on how platforms like TikTok influence the world around us. In her book, she charts TikTok’s rise from the Chinese founders’ ambitions to its emergence as the world’s most valuable startup with 1.6 billion users worldwide. Its power––and potential surveillance and propaganda tool for strongmen––came to a dramatic crescendo with its ban and tenuous resurrection in January 2025.

Hear about the explosive reporting that actually caused TikTok to track Baker-White and led to an ongoing criminal investigation. Baker-White makes the case for how hawks in Congress have pushed the company to the brink while the U.S. government seeks backdoor access to observe and influence TikTok’s data stream. Touching on politics, finance, business, and technology, she lays bare the stakes: The war for TikTok will either create a blueprint for autocrats to warp our information landscape or close the open internet as we know it.

Emily Baker-White is a technology reporter at Forbes, where her TikTok coverage has won awards. A Harvard Law School graduate and former criminal defender, she previously led the Plain View Project, an investigation into police misconduct on Facebook, and covered TikTok for BuzzFeed News.

Steve Scher is a writer, broadcaster, and interviewer. His children’s book, The Moon Bear, came out in 2022. Over his 28 years on local public radio, he won awards for his incisive coverage of public affairs, breaking news and his beyond-the-headlines approach to issues. His in-depth interviews with award-winning authors, political leaders, scientists, artists and active citizens are noted for their intelligence and sensitivity. Most summers since 2009, he has taught a Communications Department class on interviewing at the University of Washington.

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