Lawmakers move to crack down on TikTok
Emma Loop
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One of the world’s most popular social media companies is facing fresh scrutiny from top officials in Washington as they increase regulatory pressure amid growing concerns over the platform’s risk to national security.
Senior lawmakers in Congress and members of the Biden administration are pushing for fresh powers to curtail the influence of TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance, arguing that the Chinese communist government can exploit the platform to advance its authoritarian agenda.
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On Mar. 7, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would give the administration more authority to crack down on technology from foreign adversaries that poses a threat to national security, including TikTok. “Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S.,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement announcing the legislation.
“Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks,” Warner said. “We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren’t playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they’re already ubiquitous.”
The bill, which Warner introduced alongside Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD), is the latest action on Capitol Hill seeking to limit the app’s operations in the U.S., where it is most beloved among young adults and teenagers. Ten other senators from both parties are co-sponsoring the legislation.
Just a week before, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bill to give the president the power to specifically ban TikTok, and in December, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Warner’s counterpart on the intelligence panel, joined two House members in introducing legislation targeting TikTok. Meanwhile, federal departments and agencies have been ordered to remove the app from their devices in response to a ban Congress passed late last year.
But the most recent measure, dubbed the RESTRICT Act, has broader bipartisan support than past efforts, as well as the White House’s backing. This makes it the biggest threat yet to TikTok’s future in the West.
“This legislation would provide the U.S. government with new mechanisms to mitigate the national security risks posed by high-risk technology businesses operating in the United States,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “Critically, it would strengthen our ability to address discrete risks posed by individual transactions, and systemic risks posed by certain classes of transactions involving countries of concern in sensitive technology sectors.”
“We look forward to continue working with both Democrats and Republicans on this bill, and urge Congress to act quickly to send it to the President’s desk,” Sullivan added.
A spokesperson for TikTok criticized the legislation, saying a “U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide,” per Reuters.
The new congressional measures come amid heightening tensions between the U.S. and China for myriad reasons, including trade issues, U.S. support of Taiwan, reports that China is considering providing aid to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the continental U.S. earlier this year. An American fighter jet shot down the balloon once it had flown over the Atlantic Ocean.
“If the U.S. does not hit the brakes but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation,” Qin Gang, China’s new foreign minister, said recently.
The U.S. intelligence community listed China among its chief adversaries in its annual unclassified threat assessment report, released Wednesday ahead of public testimony from agency heads on Capitol Hill. “Efforts by Russia, China, and other countries to promote authoritarianism and spread disinformation is helping fuel a larger competition between democratic and authoritarian forms of government,” per the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “This competition exploits global information flows to gain influence and impacts nearly all countries, contributing to democratic backsliding, threats of political instability, and violent societal conflict through misinformation and disinformation.”
“Beijing largely concentrates its U.S.-focused influence efforts on shaping U.S. policy and the U.S. public’s perception of China in a positive direction, but has shown a willingness to meddle in select election races that involved perceived anti-China politicians,” the report added.
At the hearing held by Warner’s committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Chinese government could use TikTok to access user data for millions of citizens, control phone software, and use its powerful recommendation algorithm to manipulate American opinion toward China.
“I think the most fundamental piece that cuts across every one of those risks and threats … that I think Americans need to understand is that something that’s very sacred in our country, the difference between the private sector and the public sector, that’s a line that is nonexistent in the way the CCP operates,” Wray said.
U.S. leaders and experts say China’s aggressive intelligence and counterespionage laws, enacted in the last decade under President Xi Jinping, give the government the ability to compel domestic companies, such as TikTok owner ByteDance, to turn over sensitive data and cooperate in intelligence activities. “This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government, and to me, it screams out with national security concerns,” Wray said of the social media platform.
TikTok has tried to convince federal officials that its U.S. operations are separated from Beijing, striking a deal with American software firm Oracle to wall off user data. But press reports in recent months revealing efforts by ByteDance employees to spy on U.S. journalists and access user information have cast doubt on the company’s credibility, and in a Washington increasingly plagued by political polarization, bipartisan concern over TikTok has only risen.
“The vast majority of us on this committee think that increasing Chinese use of mobile apps like TikTok. And while we have different approaches, I know the vice chairman and I very much believe that TikTok poses a national security threat, both in terms of data collection and in terms of potentially [being] an enormous propaganda tool,” Warner said at the hearing.
Meanwhile, TikTok has also faced growing scrutiny outside Washington. Dozens of states have banned the app from government devices, while Canada and the European Commission ordered similar prohibitions last month. In 2020, India banned the app altogether amid conflict with China.
Warner and Thune’s bill would “require the Secretary of Commerce to establish procedures to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, and mitigate transactions involving information and communications technology products in which any foreign adversary has any interest and poses undue or unacceptable risk to national security,” according to their press release.
TikTok, however, claimed the “Biden administration does not need additional authority from Congress to address national security concerns about TikTok,” spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter told the New York Times. Instead, Oberwetter said, the administration could sign off on a deal negotiated between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
CFIUS, an interagency panel chaired by the Treasury Department, has been quietly probing TikTok’s U.S. presence for years now, but it’s unclear exactly where its work stands. Oberwetter told the New York Times that in August, TikTok had sent the government a draft deal that was “final, save for some legal terms that are not material to national security,” but has not heard much since. Some U.S. officials had argued for the need to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell off its U.S. operations, the Wall Street Journal reported in December.
TikTok, in any case, will have the chance to make its case to lawmakers when CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies on Capitol Hill for the first time later this month. Chew will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee “to testify on TikTok’s consumer privacy and data security practices, the platforms’ impact on kids, and their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party,” the panel said.
TikTok is also not alone in its opposition to the new legislation. The American Civil Liberties Union said both Warner’s bill and the one making its way through the House could infringe on voters’ First Amendment rights.
“Unfortunately, the Senate bill is a roundabout route to the same bad place reached more directly by the House bill,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at ACLU, said in a statement. “The Senate bill would ultimately allow the Commerce Secretary to ban entire communications platforms, which would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech. If the Secretary uses this newfound power to ban TikTok or other communications platforms without evidence of overwhelming, imminent harm, it would violate our right to freedom of expression.”
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“As the ACLU noted when former President Trump tried to ban TikTok nationally in 2020, selective bans of entire platforms could cut off the flow of information, art, and communication that social media provides, interfering with communities and connections users in the United States have with each other and with people around the world,” she added. “This interference with freedom of expression and association violates the First Amendment.”
But many senators, particularly those on the Intelligence Committee, which regularly receives classified briefings from the agencies it oversees, appear firm in their stance. “This is a substantial national security threat for the country of a kind that we didn’t face in the past,” Rubio said Wednesday at the hearing. “I would imagine that it’s probably one of the most valuable surveillance tools on the planet. If we went out and decided to build something like this of our own to influence or spy on another society, I’m not sure we could build something like this. And we’ve invited them in and protected them by our laws.”