Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate will review and amend a proposed bill that could ban TikTok before considering it for a vote.
A key point of contention is the fact that the legislation explicitly targets TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands but headquartered in Beijing.
Many in the Senate believe that this is unnecessary, and may jeopardize the legality of the proposed bill.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said that she hoped the bill would be amended to protect Americans without singling out specific companies in the text.
“I think there’s ways to talk about this in a broad public policy way without being specific to anybody or even any country really,” she said.
The bill would grant the president expansive new authorities to compel the divestiture of nearly any social media company directly owned or even “indirectly controlled” through parent companies, subsidies, or affiliates in China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.
Proponents of the bill says that targeting ByteDance is necessary to solve a perceived national security threat posed by what they describe as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of the company.
The CCP owns a so-called “golden share” in ByteDance which grants it special voting privileges on the board of directors, but the company itself is majority-owned by non-Chinese investors.
To that end, even many China hawks in the Senate believe that the bill will require modifications to make it to the president’s desk.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that “modifications” were necessary to ensure the bill remained potent but not overly expansive.
“In the end, we want a good piece of legislation,” Mr. Rubio said. “We don’t want to overshoot the target here but we don’t want to miss.”
Likewise, Sen Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that he supported the bill but that amendments would be needed before it could be passed.
“I’m glad the House passed [it] and I think TikTok poses a real serious threat,” Mr. Cruz said.
“I think the [Senate] Commerce Committee should take it up and mark it up and consider it on the merits and consider amendments.”
Some detractors, however, say that the bill does not solve the problems it purports to.
To that end, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said that American social media apps also posed mental health, misinformation, and foreign influence risks.
A “greater danger” to American families than TikTok, he said, was American tech companies’ refusals to address the damaging health effects of social media use on young people.
“A discussion of TikTok that does not discuss all the other American social media companies is missing the forest for the trees,” Mr. Markey said.
“We need to have legislation that deals with the clear and present danger to teenagers and children in this country. TikTok is part of it, but so are all the American social media companies.”
Likewise, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said that the bill was problematic insofar as it could be used to simply transfer ownership of a Chinese company to an equally authoritarian nation that was not legally covered by the bill, such as Saudi Arabia.
“Senator Rubio and I have been working for some time on making sure that Americans’ data doesn’t get into hostile foreign hands and I’m troubled by the fact that you might have one overseer, in effect, China, replaced by another overseer, the Saudis.”
“I’m going to be thinking this through carefully,” he added.
The rigorous process of review the bill will now face in the Senate’s committees is likely to come as a disappointment to some who hoped a March 20 classified briefing by intelligence officials would spur more speed in considering the bill.
“I think there was a reason why, when this brief was given on the House side to the Energy and Commerce Committee, afterwards they voted 50 to nothing to move the legislation,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
Mr. Warner’s comments referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s use last week of a rarely-implemented rule to push approval of the bill through without giving the public a week’s notice of the hearing.
Detractors claimed the move was made to prevent opposition to the bill from growing, and that the classified intelligence briefing did not provide any unique insights into threats posed by TikTok.
