Republican Josh Hawley Makes Major Move Against TikTok to Protect America’s Children

Jan 27, 2023 | Featured, Political News

Last Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) introduced a bill in Congress to ban the Chinese app TikTok nationwide. The statement comes along at a moment when there are increased concerns over the effects of TikTok on American national security.

Hawley, a longtime critic of Big Tech, said in a tweet that TikTok threatens American's privacy and our children's “mental health.” However, the proposed banning of TikTok is merely taking a step forward to the policy that began by banning TikTok on federal government devices.

TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based media company ByteDance; the Chinese government bought a one percent stake in ByteDance following a pattern in which the Chinese government has increasingly increased its control over China's economy and technology sector. It is estimated that the app has over 1 billion active users monthly.

There have been concerns over TikTok regarding national security for a long time. In 2020, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is “an interagency group that reviews proposed foreign investments in the United States to determine whether they threaten U.S. national security,” ordered ByteDance to rid itself of TikTok. Moreover, the Trump administration tried to ban TikTok, but court challenges frustrated the administration's efforts.

Once the Biden administration began, the efforts to ban TikTok nationwide were stopped. However, more recent reporting by The New York Times has detailed that the White House is looking to reach a deal that would allow the app to continue to operate in the United States, though the proposed agreement is far from certain.

Nonetheless, Hawley is not the first senator to introduce legislation banning TikTok nationwide. In November of 2022, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) introduced legislation in both the House and the Senate to ban the infamous app. In their commentary on the bill, Rubio and Gallagher explained that the National Security concerns over TikTok stem from the fact that under Chinese law, all Chinese companies must work with the Chinese government in collecting intelligence, which “includes sharing data.”

The repeated efforts to ban TikTok received a boost when a few days after the Rubio-Gallagher bill, FBI Director Christopher Wray told members of Congress in a Homeland Security Committee hearing in the House that the FBI had a “number of concerns.” According to Wray, the concerns “include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices, which allows it to compromise personal devices potentially technically.”

Recently, many state governments have banned TikTok on government devices. There have also been signs of growing bipartisan concerns over TikTok. For example, as mentioned, Hawley's bill to ban TikTok on federal government devices became law last year.

Though this fight is far from over, in the long run, if TikTok wants to continue to operate in the United States, it will have to change ownership and address all national security concerns. First, however, the prudent thing would be to ban the app nationwide.

You Can Follow Rodney on Twitter Here