The Biden administration, through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, has been working on an arrangement that would store US data on servers hosted by Oracle Corp.
Lawmakers and experts have raised questions about whether that set-up would successfully keep the data from leaking to China. Under Chinese law, companies can be forced to share data with the government.
TikTok Inc Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said during a Senate hearing in September that the company has strict controls over access to data and where it is stored, and that the company would not give that data to the Chinese government.
The Rubio-King bill is one of many proposals that have been introduced in recent days to deal with concerns over TikTok.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has been critical of TikTok in past, has not endorsed any specific measures and Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, is pursuing his own legislation that gives the administration authority to pursue restrictions on a whole host of foreign-owned apps but does not specifically target TikTok.
The Rubio-King bill, which was first introduced last Congress by Rubio along with congressmen Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, has added a key lawmaker with King, who has been active on cybersecurity issues.
“Make no mistake – every ‘private’ enterprise in China has direct ties and on-demand information-sharing requirements with the national government,” King said in a statement referencing TikTok.
Meanwhile, Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, wrote to the CEOs of Apple and Google urging them to bar the platform from their app stores, citing national security concerns.
