Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party has mandated that Chinese companies have an obligation to support and cooperate in the country’s national intelligence work.
The same legislation was cited when the administration moved to ban government agencies from buying devices or systems from Chinese firms including Huawei Technologies, ZTE, and DJI drones.
The U.S. Department of Defense, State, and Homeland Security already prohibit employees from downloading the TikTok app on their government-issued devices, Hawley pointed out in March, when the bill was first proposed.
These departments “even advised them to have their children uninstall it from their personal devices,” Hawley noted.
TikTok lobbies Washington to stay in business
TikTok’s owner, the China-based ByteDance spent a record-breaking $500,000 on U.S. federal lobbying in the second quarter of 2020. The TikTok video app company spent $300,000 in the first quarter.
TikTok is fighting allegations that it funnels Americans’ data to Beijing.
