Multiple congressmen from both parties are calling to target or ban TikTok after the popular app’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testified to Congress.
Communist Chinese government-tied TikTok is “an immediate threat” to America, according to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). She, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other members of Congress are targeting TikTok as a national security risk.
Rodgers, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, clarified on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper that Chew’s testimony did anything but reassure her. She said that data privacy legislation is certainly needed. National security experts and whistleblowers have emphasized the same point: TikTok collects highly detailed data on American users, which is accessible to Chinese employees at ByteDance, TikTok’s communist Chinese government-tied parent company.
McMorris Rodgers said, “I would say there's an immediate threat via TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party. That is the reason that I believe we need to ban TikTok immediately. It is a national security threat." She insisted to CNN, "It united Republicans and Democrats on the committee as to the urgent need for us to take action.” There is growing bipartisan support for banning TikTok, despite some Democrat resistance. The Biden administration even recently banned TikTok on federal devices.
“What the hearing made clear to me was that TikTok should be banned in the United States of America to address the immediate threat and we also need a national data privacy law,” McMorris Rodgers added.
Meanwhile House Speaker McCarthy tweeted March 26, “The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has also supported taking action against TikTok. On the Sunday edition of ABC’s “This Week,” he said that the recent hearing “increased the likelihood that Congress will take some action.”
But Republicans aren’t the only ones taking aim at TikTok. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) stated his concerns about TikTok on the Sunday edition of CBS’s Face the Nation. “At the end of the day, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, and by Chinese law, that company has to be willing to turn over data to the Communist Party or, one of my bigger fears, we have 150 million Americans on TikTok, average of about 90 minutes a day, and how that channel could be used for propaganda purposes or disinformation by the Communist Party,” Warner said.
Warner introduced the Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act, proposed by a bipartisan coalition in the Senate, that would empower the Secretary of Commerce to restrict or ban apps posing a national security risk.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) owns a financial stake and board seat in ByteDance. The 2017 Chinese national intelligence law requires every Chinese entity to spy if demanded. No wonder congressmen and government officials are pointing out ByteDance’s TikTok is a national security risk.
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