President Joe Biden signed an executive order that reversed and replaced former President Donald Trump‘s ban on TikTok and WeChat.
What We Know:
- Biden’s new order instructs the Commerce Department to carry out a national security review of 10 apps with foreign ties. The Commerce Department must state what they consider as “unacceptable risks” and draft a report with recommendations on how to protect Americans’ data. Biden’s new executive order replaces the three executive orders signed by Trump in August 2020.
- TikTok is a video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, and WeChat is a messaging app owned by Shenzhen-based Tencent. Both apps were under heavy scrutiny by the Trump administration, with the former president forcing U.S. companies to stop doing business with the Chinese ones. Trump also ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. company or risk the app being banned from all U.S.-based app stores. However, due to the challenges he faced with his executive orders, the ban was never enforced.
- The Biden Administration has similar reservations as the Trump Administration, in that they believe China is trying to retrieve Americans’ information through measures that violate our national security. When questioned by the Trump Administration, TikTok maintained that their app doesn’t utilize the Chinese government, and all the data gathered on U.S. users is stored in the U.S. and Singapore.
“The Biden Administration is committed to promoting an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet, protecting human rights online and offline and supporting a vibrant, global digital economy,” the White House voiced in a statement.
- Biden’s new executive order does not affect the negotiations that TikTok is currently having with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States on various ways to protect U.S. user’s data. His administration has decided to suspend efforts to force the sale of TikTok and await the recommendations made by the Commerce Department.
Biden’s hope with his executive order is to protect all Americans’ data from collection and utilization by U.S. rivals.
