Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, raised national security concerns regarding TikTok and is now calling on the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S., (CFIUS), to ban the app.
“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,”Carr said AxiosHe published an article Tuesday. He stated that there isn’t “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].”
TikTok may be used to influence American politics secretly, according to some concerns. More than 200 millions people have downloaded the app in the U.S.
CFIUS and the Chinese-owned company are currently in negotiations about ByteDance, the parent company. This will allow an American company to take control of the app in the U.S.
“Commissioner Carr has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner,”A TikTok spokesperson spoke to Axios via a statement. “We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.”
Carr had written letters to Google, Apple and Google earlier this year asking them to remove the video sharing platform from their app store. Both companies did not accept his suggestion.
The FCC cannot regulate TikTok directly, but in November 2021, Carr’s warnings about Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei led to Congress passing a bill requiring the FCC to secure telecommunications systems against potential foreign threats to national security.
