US senators will pitch a bipartisan bill this week that would ban TikTok by blocking foreign-owned technology that poses a national security threat, Fox News reported on Sunday.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on “Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream,” who asked the senator about the panel”s upcoming hearing on worldwide threat assessments and the threats posed by China.
“I think for a long time, the 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,” Warner replied.
He went on to explain the steps Congress has already taken to limit the presence of Chinese technologies in the US and added, “This week, I”ve got a broad bipartisan bill that I”m launching with my friend John Thune, who will be the Republican lead, where we”re going to say, in terms of foreign technology coming into America, we”ve got to have a systemic approach to make sure we can ban or prohibit it when necessary.”
Bream asked Warner whether that includes TikTok and the senator replied, “That means TikTok is one of the potentials.”
TikTok is owned by a China-based parent company called ByteDance, and Warner noted that Chinese companies are obligated under a 2016 law to obey the Chinese Communist Party.
Warner explained that there are “100 million Americans on TikTok 90 minutes a day” and 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 to basically – the kind of videos you see would promote ideological issues.”
TikTok has faced rising concerns over national security due to Chinese parent company ByteDance. Both parties in Washington have become increasingly concerned that the Chinese government could use its legal powers to access the user data of American citizens or to spread misinformation.
In August of 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with ByteDance, saying Chinese tech operations may be used for spying.
The company later announced it will challenge the crackdown on the service in court.
In December, the US House of Representatives Committee on House Administration banned TikTok from all House-managed mobile devices “due to a number of security risks”. In addition, more than 20 US states have banned TikTok from government devices.
Last week, the White House gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have TikTok on federal devices and systems.
Several days later, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted along party lines to give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok.

TikTok has pushed back against efforts to ban the app in the US.
A TikTok spokesperson told FOX Business on Sunday, “We hope that Congress will explore solutions to their national security concerns that won’t have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans, and we hope that politicians with national security concerns will encourage the administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok. A US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide.”