Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Protect Americans Against Foreign Adversaries

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan bill in the House seeks to protect Americans from the prying eyes of foreign adversaries by tightening their reins on ByteDance applications, including TikTok.

The bill, introduced by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., aims to empower the president to designate and prohibit certain social media applications from being offered on U.S.-based app stores and web hosting services if he believes they pose a national security risk. 

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it is willing to leverage technology to spew disinformation, undermine democracy and promote antisemitic propaganda,” said Gottheimer, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the ranking member of the National Security Agency and Cyber Subcommittee.

“Using TikTok, the Chinese government has the ability to control what an entire generation of Americans sees and consumes every single day,” he continued. “It’s time we fight back against TikTok’s information invasion against America’s families. In the wrong hands, this data is an enormous asset to the Chinese Communist Party — a known adversary — and their malign activities.” 

Specifically, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act allows the president, after notice to the public and Congress, to require social media platforms to end their affiliation with owners controlled by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party or the Russian Federation.

Under the terms of the bill, the president can exercise this authority in instances where an application presents a national security threat, has over 1 million annual active users, and is under the control of a foreign adversary entity, such as TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.

The act incentivizes TikTok and other platforms to divest of their foreign adversary owners, and says if and when they do, their availability in app stores and web hosting services will be restored.

Further, if an application controlled by a foreign adversary company does not divest, it must provide users with a copy of their data in a format that can be imported into an alternative social media application. 

In such cases, any user would be able to download their data and content and seamlessly transition to another platform.

That act also states that no enforcement actions will be taken against the users of restricted applications.

“This is my message to TikTok: Break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users,” Gallagher said. 

“TikTok’s time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance,” he said.

“So long as it is owned by ByteDance and thus required to collaborate with the CCP, TikTok poses critical threats to our national security,” agreed Krishnamoorthi.

“Whether it’s Russia or the CCP, this bill ensures the president has the tools he needs to press dangerous apps to divest and defend Americans’ security and privacy against our adversaries,” he said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue