The White House welcomed a bill on Tuesday that would allow the United States to ban the Chinese‑owned video‑sharing app TikTok, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement. The legislation, backed by Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, represents a rare bipartisan effort among U.S. lawmakers. “We applaud the bipartisan group of senators, led by Senators Warner and Thune, who today introduced the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” Sullivan said. The bill would empower the government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services in ways that threaten Americans’ sensitive data and national security.
The Senate bill, together with White House support, has accelerated political momentum against TikTok, which is also the target of a separate piece of legislation in the House of Representatives. “Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S.,” Senator Warner said. He added that previous concerns had focused on Huawei and ZTE for telecommunications security and, earlier still, on Russia’s Kaspersky Lab for compromising government and corporate devices.
Appearing tough on China is one of the few issues that can garner bipartisan support in both the Republican‑run House and the Democrat‑controlled Senate. With Congress and the White House aligned on the need for a law to curb TikTok’s powers, the likelihood of the legislation becoming law has increased significantly.
TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, has more than a billion users worldwide, including over 100 million in the United States, where it has become a cultural force, especially among young people. In response, TikTok pointed to its months of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which assesses foreign investment risks to U.S. national security. “The Biden Administration does not need additional authority from Congress to address national security concerns about TikTok: it can approve the deal negotiated with CFIUS over two years that it has spent the last six months reviewing,” spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told AFP. Echoing free‑speech concerns, she likened a U.S. ban to “a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion‑plus people who use our service worldwide.”
The legislation follows a January ban on U.S. government workers installing TikTok on their devices. Civil servants in the European Union, as well as in Canada and Denmark, are also prohibited from having TikTok on their phones.
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