US Lawmakers Step Up Push to Ban TikTok With Bill This Week

US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner plans to introduce a bill this week to allow the US to systematically ban Chinese technology, including services like TikTok, he told Fox News on Sunday.

TikTok’s commercial success in the US has come at the expense of local social media giants like Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube. (AFP)

US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner plans to introduce a bill this week to allow the US to systematically ban Chinese technology, including services like TikTok, he told Fox News on Sunday.

Calling it “a broad bipartisan bill” that will be co-sponsored by Republican John Thune of South Dakota, Warner said the law will give the US the power to ban or prohibit foreign technology where necessary. When asked if that would implicate ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok, he confirmed and elaborated on his reasoning.

“You have 100 million Americans on TikTok for 90 minutes every day,” the Democrat from Virginia said. “They are taking data from Americans, not keeping it safe. But what worries me more with TikTok is that this can be a propaganda tool.”

TikTok's commercial success in the US has come at the expense of local social media giants like Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s YouTube, with both developing short-video services in response to the ByteDance app's popularity. ByteDance has sought to distance the service from its China roots, including by hosting user data in Singapore, though threats of a ban in the US have lingered for years. Former President Donald Trump was nearly able to force the sale of TikTok's US operations to Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. before his term expired.

Warner cautioned that China presents a threat to the US beyond that of the Soviet Union, and that early assumptions that integrating China into the global economy would make the country more liberal were off base.

“I think for a long time, conventional wisdom was, the more you bring China into the world order, the more they're going to change. And that assumption was just plain wrong,” he said.

The senator couched his position on TikTok and other Chinese tech in defensive terms, saying China is investing heavily in its economy and technology, and the US must similarly take action to stay ahead.

“China is investing in economic areas. They have $500 billion in intellectual property theft,” Warner said. “And we are in a competition not just on a national security basis, but on a technology basis.”