The Biden administration is stepping up its pressure campaign against TikTok, threatening to ban the world’s most popular app in the United States if the company does not divest from its Chinese ownership.
Public concerns from the current administration about the successful application have increased considerably in recent days. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the US government is again seeking to separate the app from its Chinese owners, mandating the sale through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS).
TikTok rejected the new White House lawsuit, arguing that the proposed solution would not resolve the US government’s concerns. TikTok claims that the company’s unusual gesture of self-regulation, undergoing an audit by US tech giant Oracle, among other measures, it would offer more resolution.
“If the goal is to protect national security, divestment doesn’t solve the problem — a change of ownership wouldn’t place new restrictions on data flows or access,” TikTok spokeswoman Maureen Shanahan told TechCrunch. “National security concerns are best addressed with transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust monitoring, investigation, and third-party verification. , which we are already implementing”.
That program, known as Project Texas, is part of an ongoing TikTok charm offensive in the US that seeks to present the company’s US operations as transparent and accountable. The campaign comes with about $1.5 billion in infrastructure and corporate reorganization spending to erect a firewall between the company’s American business and its Chinese property.
In an interview with the Journal, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew argued that the Texas Project would put US data out of the hands of the Chinese government. He declined to answer whether the founders of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance would be willing to divest.
“I appreciate the feedback on what other risk we’re talking about that isn’t addressed in this,” Chew said in the interview. “So far I haven’t heard anything that can’t be resolved by this.”
The TikTok national security saga began during the Trump administration. Threats from the Trump White House against the company eventually culminated in a plan to force TikTok to sell its US operations to Oracle by the end of 2020. At the time, TikTok also rejected a takeover offer from Microsoft, but ultimately did not sell to Oracle either.
The deal was shelved indefinitely when Biden took office the following year, the result of the White House’s shifting priorities and a series of successful court challenges by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.
Last year, TikTok’s strange relationship with Oracle turned a page, with the company changing data for US-based users. to Oracle home servers. Almost at the same time, a BuzzFeed Blast Story documented internal TikTok discussions in which Chinese employees admitted to having open access to American user data, reports that went against the company’s assurances.
Since then, the Biden administration has raised concerns of its own about the hit Chinese app, which has taken the world by storm and displaced US-based social media headlines.
On Thursday, Emily Baker-White, who has published a series of illuminating stories about TikTok and national security concerns, reported that the FBI and Justice Department are both investigating the company for the concerns you have American journalists under surveillance. The UK also announced a TikTok ban for government devices on Thursday, a move the US government previously implemented. In recent months, some US-based universities have also followed suit, complying with guidance issued by state-level executive orders restricting the application.
At a recent Senate Intelligence hearing, FBI Director Chris Wray voiced his agency’s own concerns about the app and its ties to an authoritarian state with an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the US. Wray confirmed his belief that the Chinese government could force TikTok’s US operation to hand over control of the software to him, which would affect many millions of Americans. If that were to happen, Wray argued that there may be no “external signals” that the app was compromised at all.
“Something that is very sacred in our country, the difference between the private sector and the public sector, that is a line that does not exist in the way the CCP operates,” Wray said.
The timing of the Biden administration’s new efforts to raise the alarm about TikTok is likely not random. Next week, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, testify before the House Energy and Commerce committee, the first time of the head of the Executive before the Congress. The hearing, scheduled for March 23, will explore TikTok’s “consumer privacy and data security practices, the platform’s impact on children, and its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the now Republican-led committee. .
“Americans deserve to know how these actions affect their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our children safe from harm online and offline,” said committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
