A group of House Republicans demanded answers about the Biden administration’s slow-walked investigation into Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat in a letter to Secretary Gina Raimondo, head of the U.S. Department of Commerce, obtained exclusively by National Review.
Those apps, owned by Chinese parent companies, have recently faced heightened scrutiny after a BuzzFeed News report revealed that TikTok owner ByteDance could access U.S. users’ data. That’s significant given ByteDance’s extensively documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the fact that it is under the Party’s legal jurisdiction.
The letter’s lead author, Representative Jim Banks — the chairman of the Republican Study Committee — said that it seems as though the Biden administration has fallen asleep at the switch. “The Biden administration should be using every tool at their disposal to protect the data privacy of Americans from the Chinese Communist Party and so far, there has been no evidence to prove that is happening,” he told NR in a statement.
In June of last year, President Biden replaced Trump-era executive orders that would have banned TikTok, the messaging platform WeChat, and digital payment app AliPay from the United States, with a different order that directed the Commerce Department to investigate all entities that might provide Americans’ sensitive data to foreign adversaries. That order followed TikTok’s legal challenges to Trump’s ban order that had temporarily frozen the measure. The new Biden approach instead tasked the Commerce Secretary with completing an investigation by the fall of 2021 — perhaps leading to a future ban of such apps.
But the GOP lawmakers emphasized that, to their knowledge, the Commerce Department has not yet concluded that investigation.
“Unfortunately, based on publicly available information, nineteen months into the Biden administration, the Department of Commerce has done little towards the enforcement of the [data security] rule other than subpoenaing some Chinese companies in March 2021,” they wrote in the August 4 letter. They seemed to be referring to Commerce’s public disclosure that month of having subpoenaed “multiple Chinese Companies that provide information and communications technology and services (ICTS) to the United States.” The letter’s signatories also included House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik, Michael Waltz — a prominent Republican voice on China policy — and over a dozen other lawmakers.
The Commerce Department, meanwhile, did not respond to NR’s request for comment asking whether it had taken further steps to investigate Chinese apps.
The lawmakers also highlighted the TikTok revelations as a reason for Commerce to act urgently. They cited the BuzzFeed report, in addition to an Australian Financial Review story which revealed that TikTok has a server connection to a mainland Chinese company run by a firm run by a Chinese Communist Party official.
“American cybersecurity experts have since renewed their call for banning TikTok,” they wrote. Indeed, it is puzzling why, rather than banning TikTok or taking action on TikTok to protect American user data, the Department of Commerce is still allowing TikTok to expand in the United States at an alarming rate!” They noted that the number of TikTok users in the U.S. is expected to reach nearly 90 million next year.
While there was a flurry of Congressional activity surrounding the TikTok revelations in June, that seems to have died down as Congress adjourned for a recess. ByteDance’s well-funded Washington lobbying team had a record quarter, coinciding with the BuzzFeed report, according to legally-mandated disclosure forms.
The failure to investigate TikTok reflects the slow pace at which Commerce is investigating other Chinese tech firms. The House lawmakers additionally wrote: “The Department of Commerce Probe that could force U.S. telecom carriers to expunge Huawei equipment is proceeding at a snail’s pace.”
In addition to scrutinizing TikTok, Huawei, and Tencent — which owns WeChat — they asked Raimondo whether Commerce considers BGI Group a national security risk. BGI is a Chinese genomics giant suspected of collecting genetic information worldwide and has a history of research collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army.