U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) speaks to the media following a classified briefing for U.S. Senators concerning the latest unknown objects shot down by the U.S. military, on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 14, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
A latest bipartisan bill will empower the Secretary of Commerce to take motion against technology firms based in six foreign adversary nations, which would come with China-based TikTok owner ByteDance, including banning them altogether, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday.
The six countries included within the bill are China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, Warner said.
He’s set to introduce the laws with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., at a 3 p.m. ET press conference on Tuesday, marking the most recent proposal in search of to limit the chance of the Chinese government influencing U.S. users through the favored video-sharing app.
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a Republican-sponsored bill with similar goals along party lines. Still, several Democrats on the committee said they would really like to support such a proposal, but hoped for more time and collaboration in crafting it.
TikTok has repeatedly said it doesn’t store U.S. user data in China and has taken steps to construct a plan to further reduce the chance of influence from the Chinese government. The corporate didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Warner said he believes the chance that the Chinese government could direct TikTok to push or suppress certain messages relies on the potential for harm on account of Chinese government access to U.S. users, reasonably than currently known issues. But, he said, the proposal would require the intelligence community to hunt to declassify as much as possible if the administration desires to go for a ban, to make the case to the general public for why a technology truly is a national security risk.
“This competition with China around who dominates technology domains, that actually is where the nexus of national security lies going forward,” Warner said.
Warner acknowledged that TikTok users will likely try to search out ways to get around a ban, should one come into place, like through the use of virtual private networks that may obscure the situation from which a user is connecting to the web. He added that the bill wouldn’t “go after individual users.”
He said the bill shouldn’t be solely meant to handle TikTok, and reasonably should create a “systemic approach” that forestalls the necessity for one-off actions.
TikTok continues to be in discussions with the Committee on Foreign Investment within the U.S. (CFIUS), which has jurisdiction to review national security risks stemming from ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of TikTok precursor Musical.ly. The corporate has described an elaborate plan often known as Project Texas meant to mitigate the opportunity of Chinese government influence on the app, but CFIUS must still approve the plan.
“The Biden Administration doesn’t need additional authority from Congress to handle national security concerns about TikTok: it may possibly approve the deal negotiated with CFIUS over two years that it has spent the last six months reviewing,” TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told CNBC. “A U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus individuals who use our service worldwide. We hope that Congress will explore solutions to their national security concerns that will not have the effect of censoring the voices of thousands and thousands of Americans.”
TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, is ready to testify at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on March 23.
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