Thune, Warner Introduce Bill to Tackle National Security Threats from Foreign Technologies

Statement

"It is widely acknowledged that TikTok is a threat to our national security, which is why Congress took steps last year to ban the platform on government devices. And before TikTok, as Mark pointed out, Congress had to take steps remove Huawei and ZTE from our telecommunications networks. In my view, we do need an approach that does away with this Whac-a-Mole with this particular technology and with adversarial nations and come up with a more systemic process in which to examine these risks and to act on them.

"I've long been concerned about how every social media company uses the data it collects from users, and I've introduced a number of bipartisan pieces of legislation to bring more transparency to big tech. But I'm particularly concerned about TikTok's connections to the Chinese Communist Party, which repeatedly, repeatedly spies on American citizens.

"It was reported last year that China-based employees of Bytedance have repeatedly accessed non-public data about users in the U.S., despite TikTok saying to the contrary, and as Senator Warner pointed out, both the Trump and the Biden administrations recognized the need for a robust process in place to evaluate the threats that are posed by foreign technology.

"This legislation builds on those efforts by establishing a comprehensive process within the Department of Commerce to mitigate, and which ultimately could lead, I would add, to banning, platforms like TikTok.

"The Chinese Communist Party has proven over the last few years that it is willing to lie about just about everything. That likely won't end with TikTok, which is why it's important to establish a holistic and methodical approach to the challenges that are posed by technology from foreign adversaries.

"It's safe to assume that if the CCP is willing to lie about its spy balloon and cover up the origins of the worst pandemic in 100 years, they'll lie about using TikTok to spy on American citizens.

"It's high time we addressed this issue. I think this legislation goes about it in the right way, and it deals with some of the attacks that have been made in the past, constitutionally, about how you approach specific or individual companies.

"But I'm pleased to be working with my colleagues on this, and I hope that this is one of those issues that we can work in a bipartisan way to solve, to get something on the president's desk, and start to attack this problem."

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