US security concerns over TikTok may affect Bytedance’s global expansion plans

This article is co-written by Coco Feng.

TikTok has taken the world by storm mostly because it is fun, lighthearted, and young.

The viral short-video app, wildly popular among teenagers, has finally received some serious attention from adults, though of the unwanted kind.

In a letter addressed to the US national security director on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, are calling on intelligence officials to assess the potential risks posed by TikTok, an app owned by China’s internet upstart, Bytedance Technology.

“With over 110 million downloads in the US alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore,” the senators wrote in their letter.

The senators’ concerns are centered on TikTok’s collection of user data and whether China censors content seen by US users, such as information on political protests.

Launched in 2017, TikTok has faced mounting pressure over the past few weeks from Washington to Silicon Valley, triggering speculation that it could become the latest victim to be caught in the crossfire of an intensifying tech war between the world’s two biggest economies – China and the US.

“There has been a steady drumbeat from US officials for weeks now suggesting TikTok could be the next target,” said Samm Sacks, China Digital Economy Fellow at New America, a Washington-based think tank.

Amid the trade war between China and the US, an increasing number of Chinese tech companies from telecom giant Huawei Technologies to AI startup SenseTime have caught Washington’s attention. More of them have been added to the US Entity List over national security and human rights issues, restricting them from buying US-made technology.

The concerns over TikTok come after the case of Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese-owned company that has been forced to sell US gay dating app Grindr – an app it purchased in January 2018 – by 2020 amid US national security fears.

TikTok is arguably the first social media app from China to garner a strong presence globally. The app has been installed 1.45 billion times since its launch; it allows users to create and consume a vast global collection of 15-second clips featuring many aspects of daily life, from singing and dancing to dressing and cooking.

But TikTok’s rise in the US – it was the most downloaded app in the US last year – has only started to attract negative attention in recent months amid rising concerns over national security issues and censorship by a foreign power.

This month, US Senator Marco Rubio requested that the government conduct an investigation of TikTok, to check whether it poses a national security risk by censoring content that upsets leaders in Beijing. He also asked a US national security panel to review Bytedance’s acquisition of the US karaoke app Musical.ly, which has been merged with TikTok.