Talks of banning TikTok in the U.S. have been happening since the Trump Administration. It is time for the U.S. government to ban TikTok, a Chinese-owned company (ByteDance), according to Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Carr would like to see the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a multi-agency government body charged with reviewing business deals involving foreign ownership, take action to ban TikTok.
Carr told CNN, “Perhaps the deal CFIUS ends up cutting is an amazing, airtight deal, but at this point, I have a very, very difficult time looking at TikTok’s conduct thinking we’re going to cut a technical construct that they’re not going to find a way around.”
Bipartisan fears flared again in September when, under pressure from U.S. lawmakers, TikTok declined to commit to cutting off the flow of data to China. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for TikTok stated: “Commissioner Carr has no role in or direct knowledge of the confidential discussions with the US government related to TikTok and is not in a position to discuss what those negotiations entail. We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the US government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.”
Carr has also called on Apple and Google to remove the TikTok app from their app stores, which they have not done. The FCC has taken steps to limit China’s influence in U.S. telecommunications networks and to block or ban Chinese-affiliated telecom companies from selling equipment or services.
“For me, this is taking what I’ve learned in the Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile context, where we’re looking at possibly nefarious data flows, and bringing it to bear in terms of this issue,” Carr said.
TikTok has over one billion active users worldwide and is the most downloaded app for 2022.