New Bill Proposes Banning TikTok in the U.S.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which screens foreign investments in the U.S. for national security risks, is by multiple accounts in conversation with the social media platform TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance. Little is publicly known about these conversations, but media reports indicate that CFIUS and TikTok are discussing a deal that would address U.S. government security concerns while also allowing TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. without sale by its parent ByteDance.

Justin Sherman writes in Lawfare that

As this saga plays out behind closed doors, some members of Congress are pursuing a different approach. On Dec. 13, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), along with House members Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), introduced a new bill to ban TikTok and ByteDance from operating in the United States. There has been some bipartisan consensus around TikTok-related issues, but Democratic co-sponsorship is notable, as Republicans have on the whole been more vocal in calling for a complete ban. The members titled the bill the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act—or the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act, for short. The bill’s stated purpose is “to protect Americans from the threat posed by certain foreign adversaries using current or potential future social media companies that those foreign adversaries control to surveil Americans, learn sensitive data about Americans, or spread influence campaigns, propaganda, and censorship.”

In several ways, the bill contributes to the risk assessment landscape around foreign technology companies. It defines terms such as “entity of concern” and establishes a list of criteria that would indicate a foreign social media platform is unduly subject to a foreign adversarial government’s control. It also lists countries of concern beyond China, including Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

Sherman says that, all told, it is a noteworthy piece of legislation, and it delineates between the risk of data access and the risk of content manipulation better than then-President Trump’s executive order on TikTok. But it raises many questions about how the U.S. government should approach concerns about foreign social media platforms and national security—and how the U.S. government should be able to respond to potential risks.