The White House is trying to get the US Senate to work quickly to vote on a bill that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the US. In a new interview with ABC News, White House national security communications adviser John Kirby stated, " . . . we urge the Senate to move swiftly on this."
The bill, officially labeled as the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, was approved earlier this week by the full US House of Representatives with a vote of 352-65. So far, there's no word on when or if the bill will be voted on by the full US Senate. If it does pass the Senate, the bill will go to President Joe Biden to sign into law, and Biden has already indicated he will sign it.
If that indeed happens, the US will then demand TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, sell off its interests in the social network 165 days after it becomes law. If ByteDance fails to do so, TikTok could be banned from US app stores.
In his interview with ABC News today, Kirby stated the White House does not want to ban TikTok, adding, "We understand there's a lot of people whose economic life relies on it." However, Kirby added:
We want to see divestiture from this Chinese company because we are concerned, as every American ought to be concerned, about data security and what ByteDance and what the Chinese Communist Party can do with the information they can glean off of Americans' use of the application.
ByteDance has said repeatedly that it would not send any of TikTok's data to the Chinese government.
Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard, is reportedly trying to gather up some partners in a bid to acquire TikTok from ByteDance. Another group, headed up by former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, may be trying to do the same thing. However, there is considerable doubt among financial analysts that the Chinese government would allow such a sale to go through.
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