WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Sen. Marco Rubio is once again calling on the president to block the popular app TikTok after he says China's government took an ownership stake in the app's parent company.
"The Biden Administration can no longer pretend that TikTok is not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rubio said in a statement. “Even before today, it was clear that TikTok represented a serious threat to personal privacy and U.S. national security. Beijing’s aggressiveness makes clear that the regime sees TikTok as an extension of the party-state, and the U.S. needs to treat it that way.”
Rubio has repeatedly asked both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to ban the app in the U.S. through various forms of legislation.
The U.S. Commerce Department is reviewing security concerns of the app and others since being directed to by Biden, Reuters reports.
"TikTok is led by an executive team in the US and Singapore," TikTok said in a statement to Reuters, adding that "the China-based subsidiary of ByteDance Ltd. referenced has no ownership of TikTok."
In June, Biden dropped Trump's efforts to ban TikTok and WeChat. The Biden Administration said at the time it could conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China, including apps like TikTok and WeChat.
According to a release, Rubio introduced the "Adversarial Platform Prevention (AAP) Act" which he says would "establish a set of data protection and censorship related standards and restrictions that must be met before high-risk foreign software, like PRC-owned TikTok and WeChat, is permitted to legally operate in the United States.
“President Biden must take immediate action to remove ByteDance and TikTok from the equation,” Rubio said in a statement. “U.S. partners such as India have already come to this conclusion, banning TikTok from their country last year. It is past time we acted on this threat as well.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
