A forced sale of social media app TikTok, which U.S. intelligence officials have deemed a national security risk, could occur before the November 2024 presidential election, House China Committee leaders said Sunday. stated.
House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthy (D-Ill.) spoke out after the House passed a bill last week to block TikTok from the United States. They appeared together on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” If ByteDance, the parent company with ties to the Chinese government, does not divest the app from the app store within 165 days, the app store will be shut down.
Asked if a forced sale could happen before the November election, Mr Gallagher said: “Absolutely.”
“And I think that’s all the more reason why we have to address this issue now. The closer we get to the election, the greater the stakes are,” Gallagher said.
TikTok’s critics have long called it a national security threat.
They cite concerns about the Chinese government’s ability to use its power over ByteDance to access sensitive user data even in the United States, which the company denies.
“Every intelligence community member who testified before the Intelligence Committee last week suggested that under its current ownership structure, TikTok is a threat to national security. That’s why we will separate TikTok from ByteDance and, by extension, from China. “The Communist Party,” Gallagher said.
As the bill heads to the Senate, Krishnamoorthi, the committee’s ranking member, said he and Gallagher were “very surprised” by the overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and that senators were “extremely surprised” by the overwhelming bipartisan support in the House. He said they had a “positive” conversation.
It’s unclear how quickly the Senate will take up the bill, but Krishnamoorthi noted that the White House is asking senators to “take up this bill quickly.”
