Biden Administration escalates US’ action against Chinese state on fears of espionage
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Biden Administration has said it will ban TikTok in the US unless its Chinese owners sell their stakes.
The government’s fear is that the Chinese-owned video app is and will be used by the Chinese government as a means of spying on users. TikTok has more than 100 million users in the US.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, whose CEO, Shou Zi Chew, is scheduled to appear before the US Congress next week. ByteDance shares are 60% owned by global investors, 20% by employees and 20% by its founders.
This is just the latest escalation in a series of moves designed to bolster the US against the Chinese state which began under President Trump, and lead to Huawei kit being banned from communciations infrastructure in much of Europe and elsewhere, as well as the US.
Official device ban
The US has already banned TikTok’s installation on Federal Government devices, a move that the authorities in the UK, Canada and Australia intend to replicate.
The Guardian newspaper quoted Charles Parton, who has 22 years’ of working with China via the UK Foreign Office, seemed like a cool voice of reason in the increasingly heated environment. He said that the proposed action in the UK should also cover ministers and officials on their personal phones.
He was reported saying, “This all comes back to a lack of a security culture. In the days of the Soviet Union, there was general acknowledgment that some things had to be off limits. But China, although a bigger long-term threat to our security, economic prosperity, values and data, is not seen in the same light. It should be.”
In other words, who in their right mind would put such a play time app on ministerial or other governement official work phone in the first place, Chinese or otherwise?
Trying to head off trouble
Earlier this month, as political pressure mounted in the US to ban the app, TikTok announced a data security regime to protect users’ information in Europe, known as Project Clover.
The plan to store data on servers in Ireland and Norway at an annual cost of €1.2 billion and for a third-party IT firm to vet any data transfers outside Europe.
Whether President Biden can make good on his threat remains to be seen: his predecessor tried to outlaw the use of TikTok in the US in 2020 as its popularity soared during lockdowns, but was thwarted by the courts.
Also, just how effective the forced sell-off would be at achieving the Biden Administration’s aims is unclear. As Brooke Oberwetter, a TikTok’s spokesperson, told Reuters, “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.”.
TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) have been locked in talks about data security requirements for more than two years. TikTok claims to have spent more than $1.5 billion on data security and denies all allegations of spying.
Spy balloon on smartphones?
Reports of Chinese spy balloons over the Americas in recent weeks have upped the ante between China and the US.
TikTok said on Wednesday that “the best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification”.
Michael McCaul, a GOP congressman and chair of a Congressional committee that supports the proposed legislation described TikTok as being like a “spy balloon in your phone”.