Ro Khanna Favors ‘Forced Sale’ Of TikTok To US Company
Harold Hutchison on February 6, 2023
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California said Monday he was in favor of a “forced sale” of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok to an American company during a Monday appearance on CNBC.
“I believe there should be a forced sale to an American company. You can’t just ban something that millions of young people are using,” Khanna told CNBC host Joe Kernan. “But the issues are very serious about who’s collecting this data, is it being used to manipulate information to many American young people?”
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a China-based company that reportedly requires employees to attend monthly meetings to study Chinese Community Party policies, CNN reported. The company’s executives refused to stop sending data to China, where employees of ByteDance reportedly access the information, during a September hearing.
WATCH:
The United States Air Force shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina Saturday. The balloon, which China claimed was a civilian meteorological research platform, drifted over states where bases housing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers like the B-2 Spirit, are located.
The Department of Defense confirmed a second balloon, similar to the one shot down off South Carolina, was flying over Latin America Friday.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas banned TikTok and a number of other apps, most tied to China, from government devices Monday, calling the apps a security threat.
“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,” Abbot said in a statement. “Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members, TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device.”
The House of Representatives and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas also issued bans on the Chinese-owned social media app.
“We’re sorry to see the unintended consequences of these rushed TikTok bans—policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity— beginning to impact universities’ ability to share information, recruit students, and build communities around athletic teams, student groups, campus publications, and more,” a spokesperson for TikTok told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].