TikTok has issued statements recently about the possibility of entirely separating from ByteDance, which is the Chinese tech company that is known to control the titanic social media platform, in what seems to be an effort to assuage the concerns of American legislators about data privacy and other national security risks.
Executives are speaking up about the possibility of selling TikTok to a different company or an initial public offering as a possible last resort should legislators within America openly reject the existing national security proposal offered by the company called Project Texas, as explained in a report issued Tuesday from Bloomberg. Authorities from the Chinese Communist Party would have to allow such a move to take place.
The report was issued just at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — which is a board made up of a total of nine officials at the cabinet level who are tasked with weighing the national security implications of international investments into American companies — carried out a review of TikTok. Representatives from within the Justice Department have reportedly not given an answer to the proposal coming from the company.
“Neither a ban of TikTok nor a divestiture of TikTok from ByteDance does anything to address national security concerns about data transfers,” expressed TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter in a release to Bloomberg, going further to add those users in America “would be held to a significantly higher security standard than any comparable American company” as part of Project Texas.
Both Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) have recently encouraged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is known to be the leader of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, to try and force through this divestiture of the social media platform. A letter from the legislators made reference to the body mandating that Beijing Kunlun Company fully divest itself of homosexual dating site Grindr and health care platform PatientsLikeMe close to four years ago while under the Trump administration.
The newly ignited controversy regarding TikTok has come about in the middle of ever-worsening tensions in broader Sino-American relations that have been caused by at least one surveillance balloon coming from China that flew over the continental United States. Shou Zi Chew, the current CEO of TikTok, is slated to testify in front of members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this coming week.
Going further than the recent prohibition of TikTok on any federally owned devices issued by President Joe Biden and similar actions taken by multiple state governments, legislators have also recently brought forth a number of new bills which would force the total divestiture of TikTok or otherwise significantly restrict the platform, which handily outranks other social media titan such as Meta and Twitter when looking at daily usage. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) recently went public with the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, abbreviated as the RESTRICT Act, which would give the power to the Commerce Department to look over information communications and technology transactions which could possibly pose risk to the security of America.
