While a bipartisan group of senators expressed “deep concern” about TikTok’s risk to the American public, the Senate has no clear path forward on passing legislation to clamp down on the social media platform.
The House passed a bill to push Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest within six months or face being banned in the United States. The vote was an overwhelming 352 to 62 in favor. However, the bill’s path remains unclear in the upper chamber, especially after senators are about to break for a two-week congressional recess.
“The district work period certainly has the potential to kill the momentum, take the wind out of our sails,” said a Senate aide close to negotiations surrounding the bill in the upper chamber. “I can tell you members on both sides were shocked to find out the extent that the app is able to access users’ personal data, I can’t say more than that.”
The comments follow a closed-door and classified national security briefing senators had on Wednesday. The goal of the briefing was to convince senators that the appropriate move is to divest the application from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, instead of a full ban in the country, according to a source briefed on the matter. While it’s unclear whether the briefing will spur action in the Senate for those who could be skeptical of the bill, senators acknowledged something must be done.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), vice chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said the briefing helped bring “some members up to date with the threats that China poses through TikTok.”
“There was deep concern about the threat from TikTok on both sides of the aisle,” Cruz said.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has endorsed the House bill, along with his counterpart, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), vice chairman. The Virginia senator has called to declassify some of the analysis from the briefing so that the public can understand the impact of the video-sharing app.
“The reality is we have that entity having that much personal data, access to, and that much potential to manipulate content on a platform that a lot of young people look to as their number one news source. That’s a national security concern,” Warner said, speaking to reporters following the briefing.
Even without the congressional recess, lawmakers acknowledge the reality that it is difficult to fast-track legislation in the upper chamber. The bill now sits in the Senate Commerce Committee.
“Urgency in the Senate are incompatible terms. So, things don’t move that fast around here, but that’s fine. This is a really big deal,” Rubio said.
“It’s not natural for most of us that we are going to pass laws to force companies to divest — we have done it before, it happened with Huawei, that happened with Grindr. It’s not unprecedented when it comes to the national security threats posed by China,” Rubio added. “We have to be careful that it’s well written, because I don’t want five years from now for someone to use a law and then some courts interpreted in a way that allows it to go beyond its intent.”
Rubio said there are still details of the House’s bill that need to be looked at more closely, like the part of the proposal that requires ByeDance to divest within 180 days, which could pose major financial and technical challenges.
“I don’t know why they settled on that time frame,” Rubio said. “I’m fine with six months, but maybe it needs to be longer.”
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Senators acknowledge that there’s still a lot to consider when it comes to taking up the House’s bill, but also concluded that action is needed.
“TikTok is a gun aimed at Americans’ heads,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who is calling for the information from the briefing to be declassified for the public. “The Chinese communists are weaponizing information, but they are constantly, surreptitiously collecting from 170 million Americans and potentially aiming that information, using it through algorithms at the core of American democracy.”
