Chinese–owned social media giant TikTok thrived during the first year of President Joe Biden’s presidency following unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on the popular app.
TikTok was recently dubbed the most popular website in the world, with over 100 million users in the United States, despite concerns about data privacy and TikTok’s strong links to China. Biden officials emphasize a national security review of the app is underway.
“The Biden administration believes certain countries, including the People’s Republic of China, seek to leverage digital technologies and Americans’ data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks while advancing authoritarian controls and interests,” a National Security Council spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “That is why President Biden put forward a new Executive Order to take strong steps to protect Americans’ sensitive data from collection and utilization by foreign adversaries, including the PRC.”
The NSC said a separate review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “is ongoing.”
The Trump administration labeled TikTok a national security threat due to concerns that the app could be exploited by the Chinese Communist Party to obtain U.S. user data illicitly. Beijing-based TikTok parent company ByteDance acquired a similar video-sharing app, Musical.ly, for $1 billion in 2017, and Musical.ly and TikTok merged in 2018. A letter from CFIUS to ByteDance in July 2020 said that “the national security risks arising as a result of the transaction include furthering the Chinese government’s ability to access and exploit TikTok user data on millions of Americans.”
President Donald Trump issued an August 2020 executive order prohibiting transactions with ByteDance and TikTok within 45 days, alleging TikTok’s vast data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
Trump followed up with a similar order that month aimed at China’s messaging app WeChat, owned by Shenzhen-based Tencent. The former president also issued a January 2021 order that included eight other Chinese apps.
The Trump Commerce Department backed off of a possible ban of TikTok in November 2020, citing a federal court order. The Biden Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to dismiss the TikTok case in July.
Biden ditched Trump’s executive orders against TikTok and other Chinese apps and replaced them with his own in June, saying vast data collection on apps “threatens to provide foreign adversaries with access to that information.” The president ordered Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other Biden officials to conduct reviews of Chinese applications.
House Republicans raised “signficant concerns” with Raimondo in December related to Chinese investment in an artificial intelligence company, PathAI, which employs her husband. Concerns have also been raised about Raimondo’s stance toward Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner that Raimondo has drafted two reports: “one with further recommendations to protect the sensitive personal data of Americans, including genetic information, and another with further recommendations on executive and legislative actions.”
The official said that “the administration is now engaged in interagency deliberations” on the issue.
Shouzi Chew, who simultaneously served as the CFO of ByteDance until November, began serving as CEO for TikTok in April, solidifying the influence of the Chinese parent company over the app.
Chew, a Singapore-based and Harvard-trained businessman, had also until March been a board member of Beijing’s Kingsoft Cloud, which had one of its software applications blacklisted as a “national security” threat in January 2021.
Chinese state-owned WangTouZhongWen (Beijing) Technology also took a 1% ownership stake in Beijing ByteDance Technology in 2021.
“The Biden Administration can no longer pretend that TikTok is not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said at the time, adding, “President Biden must take immediate action to remove ByteDance and TikTok from the equation.”
TikTok argued that “the China-based subsidiary of ByteDance Ltd. referenced has no ownership of TikTok.”
Numerous U.S. government officials, including John Demers, the former assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s National Security Division, have asserted that TikTok poses a national security threat, and the Pentagon, other government agencies, and a host of organizations and agencies have banned employees from using the app. Biden’s presidential campaign told staff to delete their TikTok accounts.
TikTok has also hired dozens of lobbyists in the U.S. to defend the Chinese platform.
ByteDance and TikTok have repeatedly claimed they have not and would not turn over TikTok user data to the Chinese government, but national security experts have raised concerns about China’s 2017 national intelligence law, which requires all Chinese companies to assist Chinese intelligence services when asked.
TikTok’s privacy policy makes it clear that it “may share all of the information we collect” with ByteDance. The company says that information may include “biometric information,” such as “faceprints and voiceprints.”
CNBC reported in June that former TikTok employees said that “the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost non-existent” and that ByteDance had access to U.S. Tiktok user data. The New York Times reported in December on an internal TikTok document that “lifts the curtain on the company’s seamless connection” to ByteDance.
Rubio has kept up the pressure on the Biden administration related to TikTok, including writing to Raimondo in October for an update on what actions were being taken and arguing that the CCP’s control over TikTok was becoming increasingly “self-evident.” The Florida Republican also wrote to U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in December to “express my concern that U.S. Army recruiters are using TikTok as a means to recruit young Americans.”
