TikTok Under Fire From Bill Backed by White House

Winston Cho
·5 min read

The White House is supporting a bipartisan measure to take action against TikTok and other companies subject to influence from foreign adversaries that could threaten national security.

A bill introduced on Monday would establish a new, unified framework for reviewing and addressing foreign technology. Under the measure, the Commerce Department would have the authority to review, block or otherwise mitigate a range of transactions involving foreign information and communications technology products and services.

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The legislation, called the RESTRICT Act, also empowers Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo to recommend to the president divestiture orders, which could include forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok. Outright bans of foreign-owned companies are not mentioned in the bill, but such measures are in play under far-reaching language directing the department to “deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit and mitigate” risks arising from foreign adversaries.

The effort — led by Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and John Thune, R-SD, the Senate Republican whip — comes after Republicans on a House committee rammed through a bill on Wednesday that would effectively ban TikTok on mobile devices in the U.S over opposition from Democrats, who said that it could ensnare U.S. businesses that don’t pose a national security risk. The bipartisan bill introduced on Tuesday represents what could be the most achievable legislative solution to address concerns that the data TikTok collects on more than 100 million American users can be leveraged by the Chinese government to advance its interests.

“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,” said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan 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.”

In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said that the “swiftest and most thorough way to address any national security concerns about TikTok is for CFIUS to adopt the proposed agreement that we worked with them on for nearly two years,” referring to The US Committee on Foreign Investment’s long-running review of ByteDance’s 2017 merger of TikTok and Musical.ly. The company proposed in August to permit its Chinese parent company to continue owning the app in a deal that would silo U.S. user data and restrict access by employees in China.

“We have been waiting for CFIUS to finalize our agreement for over six months now, while our status has been debated in public in a way that is divorced from the facts of that agreement and what we’ve achieved already,” she added. “We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people.”

Tuesday’s bill is targeted at any entity subject to foreign influence that owns or manages information and communications technology products and services that have at least one million annual active users. The Commerce Secretary would have to identify and take action against companies that pose a risk of sabotaging the operation of communications technology, affecting the resilience of the digital economy or interfering in federal elections.

Foreign governments and regimes are defined as entitles that have “engaged in a longterm pattern or serious instances” of undermining US national security. China, North Korea and Russia, among others, are specifically named in the legislation.

The lawmakers who introduced the measure argue that foreign technology, including telecommunications equipment, social media applications, security software and e-commerce platforms, have become increasingly embedded within the US information and communications networks. They say that the government has struggled to identify and respond to threats posed by such entities, pointing to Kaspersky antivirus software, telecommunications equipment supplied by Huawei and software products from firms based in China. While individual agencies have attempted address foreign technology threats, efforts have been disjointed and have failed to comprehensively address identified risks due to the “complexity and interconnectedness of the global ICT supply chain,” the senators said.

The bill also directs intelligence agencies to provide declassified information to “educate the public and business community about the threat” posed by technology from foreign adversaries.

The legislation is intended, in part, to undermine intervention by the courts. Lawmakers say that the “measured, risk-based approach is especially vital in the context of personal communications services, where federal courts have blocked prior efforts to take remedial steps against foreign software vendors as insufficiently tailored and based on insufficiently-substantiated risks.”

The senators were referencing when TikTok in 2020 successfully argued that the former president’s effort to force a sale of the company to a U.S. firm violated an amendment to a Cold War-era law that removed the president’s authority to regulate the exchange of cultural goods between the U.S. and hostile nations. They also could’ve been referring to a federal judge that same year blocking a government directive requiring Apple and Google to remove Tencent’s WeChat from their app stores. U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler found that the order could infringe on users’ First Amendment rights by making the app unusable.

TikTok confirmed in November that China-based employees could gain remote access to European user data. Reporting by BuzzFeed News has also revealed that company employees in China had access to US user data. There’s no evidence that the Chinese government has demanded American user data from TikTok or parent company ByteDance or influenced the content users see on the platform.

Among the foremost concerns from lawmakers is that the company could be forced to tweak its algorithm to boost content that undermines U.S. democratic institutions or muffles criticism of foreign adversaries. A third of TikTok’s adult users report that they regularly access news from the app, according to Pew survey in 2022. Forbes has reported on the ability of TikTok staff to “secretly handpick videos and supercharge their distribution, using a practice known internally as heating.”

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