U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, of Virginia spoke out Friday on the TikTok court case.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the divestiture of TikTok by its parent company, Chinese-based ByteDance. Warner has been vocal about the national security threat that ByteDance poses and advocates for the sale of the app to a company not beholden to a U.S. adversary.
In April 2024, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed both chambers of Congress with broad bipartisan support, was signed into law to prevent foreign adversaries from targeting, surveilling and manipulating U.S. users through the use of online applications. The legislation will require ByteDance to divest ownership of TikTok ahead of the law’s Sunday, January 19, 2025 deadline. The company is so far refusing to do so.
Warner said that while he knows a lot of creativity is shared on the social media app and many Americans make their living on TikTok, under ByteDance’s ownership, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has access to the sensitive data of more than 1 billion TikTok users worldwide, including 150 million Americans.
“But I’ve been concerned, literally for years, that because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, and every company — based upon Chinese law — has to be first and foremost loyal to the Communist Party of China, not to their shareholders or customers, that TikTok has posed a national security concern,” Warner said.
According to Warner, 80 percent of the Supreme Court judges agree that TikTok is a national security threat. He added that getting 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans in Congress to agree on anything is a challenge.
“But they agreed that this was a national security concern. And this law would not require TikTok necessarily be shut down, just to have that ownership share sold to a non-Chinese entity. It could be sold to an American company, it could be sold to a British, a French, a Brazilian company, but something that is not at the end of the day controlled by the Communist Party of China where they could both collect data from Americans [and be used as a propaganda tool].”
The United States is not the first country to penalize TikTok‘s parent company. Warner said that Great Britain, other European countries, Australia and Canada have already restricted the use of TikTok of government phones.
“The irony is, of course, that former President Trump was the first person to bring this issue to the nation’s attention back in his first term. He has a slightly different view now, but the national security concerns still remain paramount. It appears, we’ll have to wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling, that this law will be upheld. At the end of the day, I hope that will force a transaction and that people can still enjoy TikTok, but that we can also get rid of this national security issue,” Warner said.
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Rebecca Barnabi
