U.S. Lawmakers Want To Cripple TikTok Operations In U.S.

The world's fastest-growing social media network, ByteDance, is facing the most severe attack on its American operations since former President Donald Trump attempted to ban it two years ago, Jacob Carpenter wrote for the newsletter Data Sheet.

Photo Insert: Many TikTok workers confessed in internal company conference recordings that Chinese engineers had access to US data in late 2021 and early 2022.

The dilemma at the heart of the latest episode isn't particularly novel. US authorities are concerned that the Chinese government may gain access to enormous amounts of data collected by TikTok on the app's 100 million or so American users, allowing their geopolitical adversary to disseminate propaganda and construct profiles on US residents.

However, the fresh animosity demonstrates that TikTok remains firmly in the sights of American politicians—and will not be let off the hook anytime soon.

The latest rift stems from a BuzzFeed News revelation last month in which many TikTok workers confessed in internal company conference recordings that Chinese engineers had access to US data in late 2021 and early 2022.

Those confessions appear to contradict a TikTok executive's sworn testimony at an October 2021 Senate session, in which he stated that American users' data was controlled by a US-based security staff.

The BuzzFeed article sparked immediate outrage among the GOP's most fervent China hawks, and it gained traction this week when Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner, D-Va., and vice chair Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate TikTok's data sharing rules.

“In light of repeated misrepresentations by TikTok concerning its data security, data processing, and corporate governance practices, we urge you to act promptly on this matter,” the bipartisan duo wrote to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that President Joe Biden's administration is under increasing pressure to take a tougher stance against TikTok.

Columnist Josh Rogin, who wrote a book about modern US-China ties last year for The Washington Post, said that TikTok "can't be trusted to oversee itself" because it "answers to a government that has no checks on its power and no privacy or surveillance standards at all."

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