U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urging the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to require TikTok to sever all ties with ByteDance and any other Chinese companies.
Senator Hawley wrote, “Last week, the Chief Operating Officer of TikTok testified in response to my questions that TikTok indeed has engineers in China who can access American user data and that the company has taken no measures to ensure that the employees in China accessing this data are not members of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He concluded, “This shocking testimony calls for action. I am therefore writing to you to exercise your responsibilities as Chair of CFIUS to ensure that the Chinese company ByteDance fully divests TikTok and that TikTok sever any connections with any other Chinese company. President Trump issued an order requiring divestiture in August 2020, but President Biden declined to enforce it when he took office. That was a mistake. Fortunately, it is not too late for a correction.”
Senator Hawley has previously introduced legislation to ban TikTok on government devices.
Read the full letter by clicking here.
