The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday unanimously advanced a bipartisan bill that would force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest itself from its popular video app TikTok.
The proposed bill is the first in almost a year to address the app’s effect on national security after a similar bill in the Senate failed last year.
“At our hearing last year with the CEO of TikTok, we saw a company that was repeatedly caught lying about its relationship with ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party,” Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said in statement. “It confirmed our worst fears — that applications controlled by foreign adversaries, like TikTok, are exploiting and weaponizing American’s data and pose a clear national security threat to the United States.”
Lawmakers allege that the app is being used to target, surveil and manipulate Americans.
“Data brokers are harvesting people’s sensitive data, selling or sharing it without their knowledge and failing to keep it secure," Rodgers said. "They do this while denying people any say over if and where such personal data is sold and shared, and often without safeguards against foreign adversaries who would use it for nefarious purposes.”
The bill advanced in a unanimous 50-0 vote on Thursday, teeing up a full vote on the House floor.
In a statement, the company charged that the the U.S. is "attempting to strip" its American users of their "Constitutional right to free expression," which will also "damage" and "destroy" millions of businesses and the livelihoods of content creators on the platform.
"This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States," TikTok's statement reads. "The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country."
Introduced earlier this week, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 gives ByteDance six months to sell TikTok or be banned in the U.S. The bipartisan bill was introduced by more than a dozen legislators, including Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
“We listened to warnings from every major national security official in the Biden administration,” including the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Administration, Gallagher said during a press briefing about the bill Wednesday. “The message we’ve heard from them is that TikTok under its current ownership structure is a threat to U.S. national security.”
TikTok says it has more than 150 million American users who use the app to “come together to learn, to be entertained,” according to its website. The United States has more monthly TikTok users than any other country in the world.
“If you value your personal freedom and privacy online, if you care about Americans’ national security at home, and yes, even if you want TikTok to stick around in the United States, this bill offers the only real step toward each of those goals,” Gallagher said.
China, he charged, does not allow private companies. The Chinese Communist Party has “their hands deep in the inner workings of the company,” giving it the ability to manipulate Tiktok’s algorithm, surveil its users and conduct influence operations that Americans use for social media.
Gallagher expressed concern about TikTok becoming a popular news source for people under the age of 30 in the United States, likening it to the KGB purchasing the New York Times prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the cold war in 1962.
Forcing ByteDance to divest itself from TikTok would allow the app to remain in the U.S.
"We want to ensure divestment, not censorship," Gallagher said. "If an entity other than a CCP-controlled entity owns TikTok, Americans can still share whatever content they like, no matter how bad the dance moves may be."
The White House has signaled some support for the legislation without giving it a full-throated endorsement.
"The Administration has worked with Members of Congress from both parties to arrive at a durable legislative solution that would address the threat of technology services operating in the United States in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our broader national security," a spokesperson for the National Security Council told Punchbowl News. "This bill is an important and welcome step to address that threat."
