WASHINGTON — A highly anticipated bipartisan Senate bill to offer the president the authority to answer threats posed by TikTok and corporations like it should be unveiled Tuesday afternoon by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a committee spokeswoman told CNBC.
The Virginia Democrat will hold a 3 p.m. ET press conference with South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, the lead co-sponsor of the laws.
The precise text of the laws has yet to be released, but Warner suggested this past weekend that the bill won’t be limited simply to reining in TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
“By way of foreign technology coming into America, we have to have a systemic approach to ensure we will ban or prohibit it when essential,” Warner said on Fox News Sunday.
“TikTok is considered one of the potentials,” that may very well be targeted by the bill, Warner said. “They’re taking data from Americans, not keeping it secure.”
“But what worries me more with TikTok is that this may very well be a propaganda tool. The type of videos you see would promote ideological issues,” he added.
Warner’s bill comes nearly every week after the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a Republican-sponsored bill that goals to do much of the identical thing.
The House laws passed the GOP-controlled committee 24-16 along party lines, with unanimous GOP support and no Democratic votes.
Dubbed the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries, or DATA, Act, the House bill mandates that the president impose broad sanctions on corporations based in or controlled by China that engage within the transfer of the “sensitive personal data” of Americans to entities or individuals based in, or controlled by, China.
And while the DATA Act has advanced beyond its committee of jurisdiction, it was unclear Monday when, or if, it could receive a vote in the complete House.
CNBC’s Mary Catherine Wellons contributed reporting to this story.
