Biden Says He’s Not Sure About TikTok Ban

President Joe Biden speaks to reporters on the South Lawn after returning to the White House on Marine One in Washington, on Feb. 06, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

President Joe Biden left it open on whether he will ban the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok that has been drawing scrutiny for national security concerns.

“I’m not sure. I know I don’t have it on my phone,” Biden said on Feb. 6, in response to a reporter’s question about TikTok after returning to Washington from a weekend retreat at Camp David.

With an estimated 1.5 billion users worldwide, TikTok has become one of the most popular apps in the United States. But its connection with the Chinese firm ByteDance has raised growing concerns.

FBI director Christopher Wray in December said that the Chinese ownership could give the Chinese Communist Party ability to control the recommendation algorithm, allowing them to manipulate content and carry out influence operations. On top of that, the regime could use the app to collect data on “millions of devices,” which “gives them the ability to engage in different kinds of malicious cyber activity,” he said.

“All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interest of the United States. That should concern us.”

In a June letter (pdf) to lawmakers, TikTok admitted that China-based employees can “have access to TikTok U.S. user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team.” They further noted that certain staff from China will be able to access “a narrow, nonsensitive set of TikTok U.S. user data” to “ensure global interoperability.”

The TikTok app logo is pictured in Tokyo on Sept. 28, 2020. Kiichiro Sato/AP Photo

Previously leaked recordings indicate engineers in China had repeatedly accessed U.S. data as recently as last January.

For its part, TikTok has maintained that it would never provide user data to the Chinese regime, pointing to American user data being stored on servers in the United States.

Such revelations have caused bipartisan alarm in the United States. As U.S. officials engage in ongoing negotiations with the platform over data security, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently pushed for the Biden administration to accelerate the progress in assessing the threat posed by TikTok’s data collection, saying his “patience is running thin.”

“Even though TikTok has said that’s not the case, there have been constant examples where it has been proven that Chinese engineers are still getting access to that data,” Warner said in a Feb. 2 Fox Business interview. Given that “every company in China now has to owe its first allegiance, not to shareholders or customers, but to the communist party,” he said, “the ability to use this as a misinformation or propaganda piece is huge.”

Former President Donald Trump in August 2020 ordered a ban on TikTok and the Chinese social media app WeChat, but the Biden administration in June 2021 rescinded the decision in favor of another independent review.

As many as 30 states have moved to ban TikTok from government devices, including most recently Louisiana, West Virginia, and Texas. On the federal level, a $1.65 trillion spending bill passed in December also barred the app from government devices.

“The security risks associated with the use of TikTok on devices used to conduct the important business of our state must not be underestimated or ignored,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in a Feb. 6 statement.

“Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members, TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet activity.”