IN THE HOT SEAT — TikTok’s long-awaited first date with Capitol Hill was never going to be love at first sight. But when CEO Shou Zi Chew appears before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this week, it will become apparent that TikTok faces increasingly slim odds even to seal a loveless marriage with U.S. lawmakers. Chew will be there to mount a last-ditch effort to convince the committee that the app isn’t the Communist Party Trojan horse that D.C. makes it out to be. But between a flurry of counter-TikTok bills on Capitol Hill, a new Justice Department investigation and the news that the White House is threatening to ban the app unless it separates from ByteDance, its China-based parent company, it’s just as likely the hearing will expose the steady erosion of most major arguments the app has levied in its own defense. Trust problem — For years, TikTok has met its skeptics with a simple refrain: Trust us for what we do, not for where our owners are. That argument held a certain cachet during the Trump presidency, when there were fewer platform abuses to speak of and many dismissed the first effort to block it as an act of executive impulse. But that defense has taken a hit amid a series of revelations showing that ByteDance employees harvested TikTok data to spy on U.S. journalists — a misfire that the Justice Department is now investigating, according to Forbes — and the continued souring of U.S.-China relations under President Joe Biden, a dynamic the infamous surveillance balloon sent into overdrive. Show me the money — More recently, TikTok has tried to defuse the D.C. trust deficit by arguing the best way to prevent Chinese spying or propaganda isn’t a ban or a forced sale. It’s the company’s $1.5 billion plan to build a wall between the U.S. subsidiary and its Chinese owners. Known as Project Texas, the initiative would see TikTok hire an army of 2,500 employees to review the firm’s content moderation policies. The firm would also tap Oracle to help establish “gateways” that safeguard Americans’ data from the prying eyes of Beijing. But so long as there is “a direct or perceived connection to the Chinese Communist Party,” building a maze of corporate safeguards may never be enough to sway U.S. lawmakers, Brandon Pugh, policy director of the R Street Institute’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats, told MC over email. “Look, I've listened to TikTok's management. I've heard about the firewalls they've tried to build. They did not convince me,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told Wired last week. Playing whack-a-mole — Finally, the firm’s defenders have suggested that lawmakers are wasting their time on TikTok, since China can do all types of bad things via the other data-hungry companies that have sprung up in the vacuum of U.S. privacy law. But that argument, too, recently saw its fortunes fall with the introduction of the bipartisan RESTRICT Act, which has won support from a growing list of influential Senate lawmakers, and the Biden administration. By granting the U.S. Commerce Department new authorities to ban or limit communications tech owned by China and other countries of concern, the bill would establish a flexible, clear and repeatable process for U.S. officials to “propose a range of different things and mitigation agreements” against apps like TikTok, Justin Sherman, the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a D.C.-based research and advisory firm, told MC. That means future administrations could take a whack at TikTok — and then quickly move onto the next problem. Last gasp for data privacy — Since the RESTRICT Act still won’t address the profligate data privacy practices of Western tech companies, its shadow could give new urgency to what may be TikTok’s last-best defense: that lawmakers’ attention is better directed at a national data privacy law. If there’s anywhere where that argument would find a sympathetic ear, it’s the same congressional committee Chew will appear before later this week. Last Congress, the House Energy and Commerce panel advanced a national data privacy law to the House floor, and it’s dead set on going further this year. But TikTok might be misreading the tea leaves if it thinks it can stall Congress by selling it on a false choice between restricting apps based on where they’re from or how well they protect their data. Lawmakers want both. And thanks to TikTok, they may get it. "Clearly TikTok is an immediate threat that needs to be quickly dealt with by the American government,” a Republican aide for the House Energy and Commerce Committee told MC. “However, the only way to ensure American data is protected more broadly and from future threats from the CCP is by passing a national data privacy and security law.”
| 
Comments
Post a Comment