A bipartisan group of lawmakers has floored legislation in the US House of Representatives that would ban any apps controlled or owned by ByteDance Ltd, TikTok’s parent company.
ByteDance is a company founded by Chinese entrepreneurs and partially owned by international investors and company employees.
In recent months, ByteDance’s manipulation by the Chinese government has worried US lawmakers.
China’s 2014 Counter-Espionage and 2017 National Intelligence laws respectively mandate all Chinese companies must cooperate with Chinese intelligence efforts and provide any requested data.
Lawmakers fear the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could harness such laws to surveil TikTok’s over 100 million American users.
Consequently, lawmakers drafted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which would definitively ban TikTok and other ByteDance-owned applications.
Aside from ByteDance, any application subject to the control of a foreign adversary, as defined per Title 10, would also be banned.
States statutorily designated as foreign adversaries include North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran.
The bill would create a process for the President to select specific applications controlled by foreign adversaries and posing a national security risk.
US Representative Kat Camack (R-FL) joined Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) in filing the bill.
Representative Cammack underscored that the bill intends to protect Americans’ privacy, security, and constitutional rights.
“We have every right to protect Americans' constitutional rights, data privacy, and national security, and it's only become clear over the last several years how dangerous these foreign-owned tech platforms truly are," said Rep. Cammack.
Cammack continued, explaining how the CCP is implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to infiltrate US media and shift public opinion.
“As a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee and new House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence which deal heavily in the telecom and tech space, we know the CCP is using Americans and their data to develop Chinese AI language models and to influence U.S. public opinion in favor of the CCP.”
