ByteDance, the parent company, has hired former congressional staffers as it downplays its ties to the Chinese security state.
ByteDance, the parent company, has hired former congressional staffers as it downplays its ties to the Chinese security state.
B yteDance, TikTok’s Chinese Communist Party–linked parent company, spent a record $2.14 million on Washington lobbying efforts from April 1 to June 30, according to a new mandatory lobbying disclosure filed last night. That is the largest sum that ByteDance’s lobbying team has spent in a quarter, and it comes as the besieged tech company fights suspicions that its links to China’s security state pose a threat to U.S. national security.
The revelation is likely to raise concern about Chinese government–linked efforts to buy access to the U.S. political system, via former American government officials, at a pivotal moment for the TikTok app. Despite ByteDance’s extensively documented relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, its U.S. lobbying team registers under the law for domestic lobbyists, instead of under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Last month, BuzzFeed News reported that ByteDance engineers based in China had repeatedly accessed U.S. users’ TikTok data, contradicting assertions by TikTok executives that it was the U.S.-based team that controls access to that sensitive information. Since then, several lawmakers of both parties and other U.S. officials have launched investigations into the app’s data-sharing practices.
While the BuzzFeed piece revived a long-standing debate, concerns about TikTok are not new. ByteDance was previously reported to have collaborated with CCP security bureaus in Xinjiang on propaganda efforts surrounding its repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China and to have censored content that ran afoul of the Chinese government’s sensibilities. Concerns about TikTok peaked in 2020, when President Donald Trump tried to ban the app — a ban that was quickly blocked by federal courts.
According to the latest disclosure form, filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, the ByteDance team lobbied both houses of Congress, the White House, the Commerce Department, the State Department, and the Pentagon about a range of issues. Specifically, they lobbied on bills including the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, the No TikTok on Department of Homeland Security Devices Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act. (ByteDance also works with three other firms — LGL Advisors; Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas; and K&L Gates — all of which received considerably less money this quarter.)
Among other things, the bills under consideration would prevent federal employees and officials from using the TikTok app on their devices.
Congressional offices supporting those bills expressed alarm about the latest ByteDance lobbying disclosure. Christopher Weihs, Senator Josh Hawley’s chief of staff, said on Twitter that TikTok lobbied against his bill to address TikTok’s alleged role in Chinese espionage.
“So now we know China-based TikTok spent millions trying to kill legislation — like Sen. Hawley’s bill to ban TikTok on federal devices — all while they let their employees in China spy on U.S. users,” Weihs wrote. “Extraordinary. But not a surprise from this foreign Big Tech giant.”
USICA, which is a version of Congress’s massive China-focused legislative package, has effectively been abandoned in favor of a bill more narrowly focused on boosting semiconductor production. None of its provisions addressing TikTok have made it into the newest version.
ByteDance’s in-house lobbying team is led by Michael Beckerman, a former Republican congressional staffer, who served as a policy adviser on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Under Beckerman, who took charge in 2020, TikTok has hired former staffers to key congressional offices. Members of the team include, among others, Michael Bloom, who previously worked for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Freddy Barnes, a former staffer to Kevin McCarthy. The team is not subjected to the same rigorous disclosure requirements as FARA registrants, who must provide specific information on every contact they make with media and public officials.
TikTok’s Capitol Hill connections, however, have not quelled the outrage in official Washington following the BuzzFeed report.
FCC commissioner Brendan Carr urged Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, arguing that “TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.”
Meanwhile, senators as well as House members have demanded information from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. After Chew responded to a letter led by Senator Marsha Blackburn last month, two senior Republicans accused him of dodging key questions, including on the near-certainty that TikTok must comply with the Chinese government’s demands for U.S. user data.
Throughout this, lawmakers have alleged that TikTok executives misled Congress. “TikTok has also misrepresented its corporate governance practices, including to Congressional committees such as ours,” wrote Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the chairman and ranking member of the senate intelligence committee, in a letter to FTC chair Lina Khan. They asked her to initiate an investigation into deceptive trade practices, in tandem with a counterintelligence probe.
A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to National Review’s request for comment about ByteDance’s lobbying activities and the decision not to register under FARA.