The Select: 'TikTok Special' - A Weekly Committee Recap

'TikTok Poses a Clear Threat to National Security' - What others are saying

Vice President Mike Pence: "TikTok has been banned on all US government devices because it is a national security threat and acts as the puppet strings of Communist China to push their propaganda on the American people, and it cannot be allowed to continue to operate in our country unchecked. The tensions with Communist China continue to mount and the United States must take the necessary steps to protect our country. This legislation is one of those necessary steps, and Advancing American Freedom urges Congress to move this legislation quickly through the markup process and bring it to the House floor for a vote."

Former National Security Advisor Robert C. O'Brien: “National Security officials all agree on one thing: TikTok poses a clear and present threat to America. We cannot allow the Chinese Communist Party, our chief adversary and an organization notoriously devoted to propaganda and censorship, to control the platform that America’s youth overwhelmingly relies on for news. To do so would be akin to allowing Soviet control of several major American newspapers and TV channels during the Cold War. Congress must pass this bill and finish the job the Trump Administration started in 2020: force a sale of TikTok to remove it from CCP control, or prohibit its operation in the United States.” 

Heritage Foundation Tech Policy Director Kara Frederick: “With each passing day that TikTok remains operational in the United States, the Chinese Communist Party can gain further access to sensitive data on American citizens and continue to refine its ability to manipulate and exploit our population—particularly the next generation. TikTok poses a grave threat to our national security. TikTok’s unchecked growth and infiltration into the fabric of our society will only make it more difficult to extricate ourselves and our children from its grip. We must confront this crisis head-on and immediately prohibit TikTok from operating in the United States. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is a crucial step forward in this fight and will be a powerful tool in our arsenal to put an end to this noxious, CCP-beholden surveillance platform once and for all.” 

Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker: “Heritage Action is glad to see members of Congress from both sides of the aisle recognize the very real national security threat of apps controlled by our adversaries like China. TikTok is a dangerous tool used by the CCP to spy on, exploit, and mislead the American people. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is an important step toward addressing the root problem and getting the CCP out of the pockets of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) CEO Matt Brooks: “Many Jewish Americans awoke to the peril of TikTok after the October Hamas massacres, when the platform gained notoriety as a hotbed of pro-Hamas and antisemitic propaganda. Those messages reflected the agenda of the Communist Chinese regime with which TikTok is entangled. Allowing a company under the effective control of an adversarial government to have such access, as well as visibility into the private information of millions of Americans is an unacceptable threat to our national security. We appreciate the leadership of Chairman Gallagher and the members of both parties who are supporting the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act and urge the House and Senate to pass the bill as soon as possible.”

Polaris National Security Founder & Former State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus: “The Chinese Communist Party must not be able to control the information that Americans see and share. It is past time for Americans to protect our private data, our free speech, and make sure our social media is back in American hands.”

Americans For Prosperity Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner: “There is no question that recent advancements in technology and communication have helped lift and empower millions of people to change our world for the better. In many ways, AFP’s mission to elevate the voices of grassroots citizens to those in power has been aided by these advancements. But we also need to recognize that there are real threats to U.S. national security when these technologies are being deployed by foreign adversaries who wish to do us harm. There is mounting evidence that TikTok is that kind of security threat, and for that reason we fully support this legislation as an effort to remove the threats from more than 100 million phones in America. This support comes after two requirements were met by this bill to gain our support: 1) clear evidence of a foreign government’s involvement in malicious activities, and 2) a narrowly tailored approach focused solely on addressing that specific problem without implicating other tech platforms or companies. This ensures a targeted response to genuine national security threats while avoiding unnecessary entanglements or repercussions for tech platforms and companies. The fact is that we live in a world where Americans’ phones are being weaponized against them by a foreign adversary, and we cannot sit back and let that happen. We would never want the U.S. federal government to have the power to censor, surveil, and manipulate Americans – we absolutely should not permit that abuse of power by the Chinese government through TikTok.”

America First Policy Institute (AFPI) China Policy Initiative Director Adam Savit: “TikTok is a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled app that acts as a data-harvesting weapon disguised as a social media platform. It has become a dominant force in American youth culture, exposing private information to the CCP without the end-user’s knowledge. It would become a potent weapon of information warfare in the event of war with our adversaries. TikTok must be required to divest from its CCP parent company ByteDance to remain in the U.S. This act would neutralize the threat of CCP exploitation while still preserving our cherished freedom of speech.”

America2100 Executive Director Michael A. Needham: “China’s fingerprints are all over many of the most pressing challenges facing our country. It is unfathomable we allow a propaganda tool they control to burrow its way deeper and deeper into our society. The House must pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act immediately.”

The Vandenberg Coalition Executive Director Carrie Filipetti: “The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is a brilliant, bipartisan solution to a challenging problem - protecting freedom of speech and American youth from the insidious influence of adversarial nations on their social media platforms. This bill is tailored to ensure the Chinese Communist Party - which threatens American interests every day by spying on us from Cuba and with spy balloons, threatening our critical infrastructure, and catalyzing the fentanyl epidemic that has murdered hundreds of thousands of Americans - is not able to use TikTok to monitor our young Americans, collect their data, and compromise their security. I am proud that at a moment when working across the aisle seems increasingly challenging, the House of Representatives has put together a bipartisan bill that will keep Americans safe.”

Jewish Federation of North America President and CEO Eric Fingerhut: “Our community understands that social media is a major driver of the rise in antisemitism, and that TikTok is the worst offender by far. Antisemitism is a threat not just to the Jewish community but to all Americans. A society that cannot control the virus of antisemitism soon finds itself facing existential threats to the very fabric of civic life. The sponsors of HR 7521 have worked long and hard to develop an approach to this problem that appropriately balances free speech and individual rights with regulatory action. Congress must act now. A vote for HR 7521 is a vote against antisemitism.”

Former Under Secretary of State Keith Krach: “There is a broad consensus about the danger TikTok poses to Americans. The bipartisan Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act reflects that consensus. The Clean Store approach, prohibiting app store availability of this digital weapon of the Chinese Communist Party and other untrusted apps, is an effective way to prevent America’s foreign adversaries from invading our privacy, proliferating viruses, spreading propaganda, and threatening US national security.”

Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs:“The CCP’s control of TikTok must come to an abrupt end. In contrast to previous approaches, this bill is narrow and direct. It’s a sniper rifle. It will immediately eliminate the driving force of the app’s toxicity.” 

National Security Institute at GMU's Scalia Law School Founder and Executive Director Jamil N. Jaffer: “This new bipartisan legislation quarterbacked by Chairman Mike Gallagher and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamurthy will help protect America from the very real national security threat posed by TikTok, a Chinese Communist Party-controlled influence platform that has huge uptake in the American public. The legislation will help ensure that Americans of all ages are no longer subject to an algorithm that recently promoted videos about Osama Bin Laden's terrorist manifesto while downgrading content calling out the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Uyghur Muslims in its own country,” said Jaffer , who also served in the Bush Administration in a variety of roles, including as an Associate Counsel to the President. “The sooner we get TikTok out from under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party, the sooner Americans will be able to use that platform with confidence and ease.”

Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) China Program Senior Director Craig Singleton: “This common-sense bill safeguards individual liberty while also addressing the serious national security risks posed by Chinese Communist Party-controlled applications. But, the bill is most notable for what it does not do, which is punish individual social media users or censor free speech. That alone should garner strong bipartisan backing.”

FDD Action: “This bipartisan legislation effectively targets foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party that are using social media platforms as an information warfare tool against the United States. FDD Action supports this legislation and other critical efforts to protect Americans’ data and privacy while countering the ability of adversaries like China, Iran, Russia from spreading disinformation that undermines our national security and that of our allies.”

American Foreign Policy Council Senior Fellow Michael Sobolik: “TikTok can transform itself from a Chinese Communist Party-controlled Trojan horse into a harmless platform. This bill from Chairman Gallagher and Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi recognizes this opportunity. It is a serious bipartisan effort that targets the core problem: the relationship between TikTok and its CCP-controlled parent company ByteDance. Americans who enjoy TikTok need not lose access to the app forever, as long as ByteDance divests its holdings of TikTok.”

Digital First Project Executive Director Nathan Leamer: “We have been very concerned about the flippancy with which TikTok and their parent company ByteDance have treated the data of their users. It is clear this platform has been used as a surveillance apparatus for the Chinese government. We applaud the introduction of The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that serves as the thoughtful, pragmatic and bipartisan approach needed to mitigate the existential risks to American users. This proposal is correctly calibrated to address the conduct of TikTok while avoiding tripwires that have hindered other approaches. We encourage immediate passage by the House and call on the Senate to follow suit.”

Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer: “It’s undeniable that TikTok is more than just an innocuous dancing app. TikTok collects your voice, face, tracks your location, and has been reported to ignore your device’s privacy settings to listen in even when you’re not using it. It is a sophisticated tool designed to monitor your every move and collect your physical characteristics much like other social media companies do, like Meta or Snapchat. But, given its current corporate structure, TikTok has one troubling distinction from its competitors—the Chinese government may be the one watching and listening in. It is why the Digital Progress Institute is proud to support the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to ensure that Americans are safe from the harms the app causes and to shore up our national security.”

Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr: “TikTok’s own conduct makes clear that it is beholden to the CCP and presents and unacceptable threat to U.S. national security. Indeed, TikTok has been caught engaging in a pattern of illicit surveillance and making false statements about personnel in Beijing accessing sensitive U.S. user data. These facts were laid bare for the world to see when the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a TikTok oversight hearing last year. And it is why there is now a broad, bipartisan consensus that TikTok cannot continue to operate in the U.S. in its current form. I want to applaud the strong, bipartisan leadership that Members of Congress have shown in advancing this bill, which would definitively resolve the serious national security threats TikTok poses by banning the app or requiring that it genuinely sever ties to the CCP. This is a smart, threat-specific bill that would address a clear and present danger. I hope that this bill will soon become law.”

Third Way: “We need to ensure Americans are protected from the specter of Chinese surveillance and interference, especially with elections looming. That’s why Third Way supports the House Select Committee on the CCP’s Protecting Americans from Adversary Controlled Applications Act. This bill will give the President the authority to force the sale of TikTok or any other social media application in the future that has over a million active users and is subject to control by a foreign adversary, like China. This bill has wide bipartisan support, including from the White House. And it is specifically the result of the House Select Committee on the CCP, formed in 2023, with the firm support of both parties to investigate and improve the United States’ standing in its strategic competition with China. We, like many others, have deep concern over the Chinese government’s access to and influence over American content. That’s why this legislation is critical—ByteDance must sell TikTok."