A bipartisan team of lawmakers on Wednesday reportedly expressed concern as they walked out of a defined lecture on TikTok. The app, owned and controlled by a Chinese Communist Party- tied company, “is a gun pointed at Americans ‘ heads”, Sen. Richard Blumenthal ( D., Conn. ) said. ” There was deep concern about the threat of TikTok from both sides of the aisle”, Sen. Ted Cruz ( R., Texas ) added.
Cruz called on the Senate to “expeditiously” improve legislation that passed the House earlier this month and may ban TikTok if its Chinese user, ByteDance, refuses to sell the application within six weeks.
But one key player in the fight over TikTok disagrees: Sen. Maria Cantwell ( D., Wash. ), the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the bill. In contrast to so many of her coworkers, Cantwell has emphasized compassion and pursuing alternative paths rather than alarming about the threats the social media app poses.  ,
After receiving a briefing on Wednesday, Cantwell stated that she “might” function with the Senate Intelligence Committee to carry a second hearing on TikTok rather than calling for a vote on the act. The Senate will begin a two-week Easter break on Monday, so that hearing would n’t take place until mid-April at the earliest.
” The following steps might be something more people, like a hearing”, Cantwell said Wednesday. ” I think it’s important to get it right”.
Given that several of her former top aides are then employed by TikTok as it lobbies legislators to eliminate the legislation, Cantwell’s quiet strategy to the costs may raise questions on Capitol Hill.
Cantwell’s past deputy chief of staff, Rosemary Gutierrez, is a lawyer for TikTok through Mehlman Consulting, the company she joined about one month after leaving Cantwell’s company in 2020. The Washington Democrat’s past chief of staff, Michael Meehan, left Cantwell’s company to build Squared Communications, a consulting firm that is working for TikTok. And Kim Lipsky, who worked as the Commerce Committee’s personnel director under Cantwell, is on TikTok’s pay as a government ties employee.
The group, among people, is now tasked with ensuring the Senate does not endorse the TikTok act, which passed the House last week by a spectacular 352 to 65 ratio. Following receiving the same briefing that was given to senators on Wednesday, the House Commerce Committee unanimously passed the bill.
The Chinese-owned app is working to defeat the bill through an ad blitz that prompts its users to enter their zip codes and call their congressmen in addition to a traditional lobbying effort, which has cost more than$ 20 million since 2020. In response to the decision, there were more than 2,000 phone calls to congressional offices, with some teens threatening to commit suicide or engage in violent behavior if the app was prohibited.
Senators are now worried that Cantwell’s slow approach will allow TikTok to rally lawmakers against the bill.
” They will try to kill this slowly, refer it to committee … think about it some more, and this time next year we’ll be right here having the same conversation”, Sen. Josh Hawley ( R., Mo. ) said.
Cantwell, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, suggested she would prefer” something a little more robust,” rather than the House bill without any modifications.
We’ll take this into account, and hopefully we’ll discover a way to make the American people more secure and lessen the burden of collecting data.
It’s unclear how far Cantwell’s alternative would go. Cantwell began writing her own bill last year to address concerns about TikTok, which she claimed would “give people tools that they can use” to target the app.  ,
Cantwell did not formally submit her bill, but she did submit an early draft as a revision to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
The White House was asked to “undertake a rulemaking process to protect United States data linked to sensitive populations that could be used by foreign adversaries… while preserving freedom of expression.” Additionally, it directed the US Department of Commerce to “identify, assess, and mitigate risks to the supply chain of information and communications technology and services in the United States.”
The amendment did not provide specific instructions on a potential White House rule addressing TikTok or how the department would “mitigate” those risks.
ByteDance is subject to a national security law passed in 2017 that mandates domestic businesses to cooperate with the government’s intelligence services when requested. These businesses are not permitted to disclose their work for the government under the law. Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, objected to a congressional hearing in March 2023 regarding what might happen if the Chinese government compelled the business to hand over user data.
Through” Project Texas,” a U.S.-based storage system designed to prevent American data from being accessed by ByteDance, TikTok made an effort to address data security concerns last year. According to a January Wall Street Journal article, the project has so far failed because its managers have instructed employees to” share data with coworkers in other parts of the company and with ByteDance employees without going through official channels.“
Cantwell’s hesitance toward the House bill is not just at odds with some of her Senate colleagues. President Joe Biden has stated that he will sign the bill if it makes its way to his desk, and White House national security adviser John Kerry urged the Senate to” swiftly” pass the House bill.
We want to see the Chinese company’s sale because we are concerned about data security and what ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party could do with the information derived from Americans ‘ use of the application, according to Kirby on Sunday.
