House Panel Approves Biden’s Proposal To Outlaw TikTok

Congress adopted legislation on Wednesday that would grant US President Joe Biden the authority to impose a nationwide ban on the Chinese-owned short-form video app TikTok, which is a blow for the service as it works to demonstrate that it doesn’t represent a security concern.

The legislation granting the White House new authority to prohibit the app—used by more than 100 million Americans—along with other apps deemed security risks—was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a vote of 24 to 16—along party lines.

Democrats opposed the bill, which was proposed by Texas Republican and committee chairman Michael McCaul, claiming that House shouldn’t interfere with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ ongoing investigation of TikTok.

The CFIUS interagency council, which also receives input from the Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Homeland Security Departments, is attempting to decide whether Beijing can obtain user personal data on TikTok, undercutting national security objectives.

“We’ve been negotiating this [with Democrats] for a solid month, without a whole lot of progress,” McCaul told Politico after the vote.

Democrats “are not prepared to move forward on any action relating to TikTok,” he declared. The CFIUS process is where we as a Congress want to move forward, but they would rather give way to it.
The bill targets any owner of a connected software application that “is subject to the jurisdiction or direction of, directly or indirectly operating on behalf of, or owned by, directly or indirectly controlled by, or otherwise subject to the influence of China.” While only TikTok and ByteDance, its Chinese owner, are mentioned, the bill also targets any other connected software application owners.

The bill cites an assessment by FBI Director Christopher Wray last year that ByteDance “is controlled by the Chinese government”.
Wray’s warning, included in the bill, said the control amounted to an ability “to manipulate content and, if they want to, to use it for influence operations which are a lot more worrisome in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party than whether or not you’re steering somebody as an influencer to one product or another”.