GOP senators press Biden administration on TikTok security concerns – By Alexander Bolton (The Hill) / June 27, 2022
A group of Senate Republicans led by Sens. Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) is pressing the Biden administration over what it sees as a failure to take seriously the national security concerns posed by TikTok, a popular video-hosting service.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the lawmakers said the administration has failed to enforce an August 2020 order by former President Trump directing ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to divest its American assets and destroy any data it acquired through TikTok.
“The Biden administration has seemingly done nothing to enforce the Aug. 14 order nearly two years since its promulgation. The results of the security reviews, likewise, have not been publicly released after one year,” the senators wrote.
The lawmakers pointed out that media reports indicate Oracle has secured a deal to store all of TikTok’s U.S. data but argued that won’t address their national security concerns.
