‘TikTok’s access to 170 million American users makes it a valuable propaganda tool for the CCP,’ Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 7 unanimously approved two bills to secure Americans’ data and compel social media giant TikTok to divest from its Chinese ownership.
The committee’s 50–0 decision will allow the bills to move forward in the House, although it’s unclear if the full Congress will express the same bipartisan support for the bills as the committee.
Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said the effort was essential to ending the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to “target, surveil, and manipulate Americans.”
“Protecting Americans’ data and addressing the serious national security threat posed by the CCP has been my top priority of all Congress,” Ms. McMorris Rodgers said.
“We have given TikTok a clear choice: Divest from your parent company, which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and remain in operation in the United States, or side with the Chinese Communist Party and face a ban.”
To underscore the issue’s importance, the committee voted to suspend rules that would prohibit their markup session from occurring less than a week after public notice, using an exemption carve-out for national security issues.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would force the divestment of social media apps determined to be controlled by foreign adversaries that present a national security threat to the United States, namely TikTok.
“The Chinese Communist Party poses the greatest national security threat to the United States of our time,” Ms. McMorris Rodgers said. “TikTok’s access to 170 million American users makes it a valuable propaganda tool for the CCP to exploit and use for nefarious purposes.
“Today, we take action.”
‘Controlled By a Foreign Adversary’
The committee held the bulk of its markup in a closed session in order to receive classified intelligence from various U.S. agencies.
Ms. McMorris Rodgers said such a mechanism was important to fully grasp how TikTok serves the CCP through its parent company, ByteDance.
