Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via AP
Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey announces his run for governor at Runway Diner in South Hackensack, New Jersey, November 15, 2024.
In March of last year, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), a leader of the Problem Solvers Caucus, joined with his Republican colleagues to excoriate the Chinese social media company TikTok. He worked with the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (Select Committee on the CCP) to ban the app from U.S. stores and servers unless it was divested from its Chinese parent company and sold to other owners.
Like many in Congress, Gottheimer focused his public comments about TikTok on national security. “Using TikTok, the Chinese government has the ability to control what an entire generation of Americans see and consume every single day,” he said at the time of the bill’s unveiling. “It’s time we fight back against TikTok’s information invasion against America’s families. In the wrong hands, this data is an enormous asset to the Chinese Communist Party—a known adversary—and their malign activities.”
A year later, after backlash from the creators and vendors who rely on TikTok for sales, communication, and income, President Trump (rather dubiously) stalled enforcement of the TikTok ban, and promised to find a U.S. owner to maintain the company’s presence in America. Many congressional Democrats, feeling the blowback from outraged constituents, slowly retreated on the issue.
Meanwhile, at the end of last month, Gottheimer purchased some $8,000 in stock of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce and tech firm which the same CCP committee that helped him pass the TikTok ban has described in a recent report as a national-security threat.
According to the February report on American venture capital investment in Chinese firms compiled by the Select Committee on the CCP, “Alibaba’s cloud arm has been investigated by the U.S. government for national security risks, including how it stores personal information and intellectual property. Belgium’s intelligence service has also reportedly been monitoring Alibaba for potential espionage activities. According to one report, PRC intelligence agencies task major PRC tech companies including Alibaba to process valuable data for them, with such coordination occurring ‘daily.’”
Beyond the committee’s report, declassified CIA documents also describe Alibaba’s influence over Chinese media as degrading U.S. interests in the region.
According to Select Committee members, in 2017, the PRC Ministry of Science and Technology selected Alibaba’s cloud division to help lead the PRC’s AI development. At the same time, Alibaba’s cloud arm also received a military-civil fusion cooperation agreement with a Chinese military contractor, and secured a deal with the PRC’s defense technology university.
Why one purported Chinese national-security threat was so critical a year ago that it necessitated major legislative action, but another is a lucrative investment opportunity, is a question only Gottheimer can answer. It is worth noting, however, that he is maybe the staunchest defender of Israel in the Congress, and among other things he has accused TikTok of promoting “antisemitic propaganda.” Reporting from this month suggests that the proliferation of posts critical of Israel on TikTok was one of the major drivers of Democratic efforts to ban the app.
The risks posed to U.S. interests by Alibaba, furthermore, are not only related to national security; members of Congress warned this month that they also pose serious economic threats as well. The Select Committee on the CCP report details how Alibaba is playing an essential role in supporting Chinese efforts to beat out America in the AI race.
While much media attention has been lavished on the new Chinese AI model DeepSeek, far less attention has been afforded to Qwen 2.5, Alibaba’s own model, which it claims is even faster.
Since the release of Qwen on January 30th, Alibaba’s stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has increased by nearly 50 percent, and is on track to double in value in a matter of months. Gottheimer purchased Alibaba stocks on January 31, the day after Qwen was released, according to his periodic transaction report, a financial disclosure mandated by the STOCK Act. Gottheimer also dumped tens of thousands of dollars worth of shares in American tech companies Microsoft and Arista on the same day as the Alibaba trade.
And if that weren’t enough, days after the trade, on February 4, Gottheimer co-sponsored a bill called the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act, which seeks to limit DeepSeek’s spread in America.
“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans. Now, we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens. This is a five alarm national security fire,” Rep. Gottheimer said, adding, “We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”
In a statement from Rep. Gottheimer received after press time, he said that “Prior to taking office, I turned over management of my retirement savings and investments to a third party, who has full investment discretion. Throughout my time in Congress, decisions related to my managed investments have been made at the direction of that third party.” The congressman, who has been in office since 2017, also said that he is “awaiting approval from Congress for a blind trust,” and set up an independent trust in the meantime. He also endorsed legislation that would require members of Congress, judges, and policymaking employees to use blind trusts.
In between trading tens of thousands of dollars in stocks, reporting to his committee assignments, and racking up massive fundraising figures, Gottheimer has also found time to run for governor of New Jersey—where he is currently polling in fourth place—and lie about his 2025 Spotify playlist on Twitter.
This story has been updated with a statement from Rep. Gottheimer.
