US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy thinks lawmakers will pass bipartisan legislation to address national security worries about Chinese-owned short video app TikTok, he said on Friday, and called the testimony of the company’s CEO “very concerning”.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before a US House Committee for about five hours on Thursday and lawmakers from both parties grilled him about national security and other concerns about the app used by 150 million Americans. “Here’s a CEO that can’t tell you that China’s not spying on the data,” McCarthy said.
There are growing calls to ban TikTok or to pass bipartisan legislation to give the Biden administration legal authority to seek a ban. Former US President Donald Trump lost a series of court rulings in 2020 when he sought to ban TikTok and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat, a unit of Tencent.
McCarthy appeared to be referring to an exchange during the hearing that TikTok later argued was mischaracterized.
At Thursday’s House hearing, Representative Neal Dunn asked Chew if ByteDance has spied on Americans at Beijing’s request. Chew answered, “No”.
Republican Dunn then referenced the company’s disclosure in December that some China-based employees at ByteDance improperly accessed TikTok user data of two journalists and were no longer employed by the company and repeated his question about whether ByteDance was spying.
