‘We have a legitimate national security concern,’ Austin Knudsen says.
Montana’s Republican attorney general is cheering on U.S. lawmakers weighing legislation to restrict the Chinese-owned TikTok social media platform, and is taking these recent congressional actions as vindication of Montana’s own efforts to ban TikTok throughout the state.
TikTok is operated by ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing. The app’s popularity and Chinese ownership have attracted heightened scrutiny in recent years, with concerns the ruling Chinese Communist Party is able to exercise significant influence over the app’s operation to surveil international users, harvest data, shape global perceptions about China and its ruling authorities, and promote dangerous social media trends.
“One of the big reasons the Montana legislature took action is because we just don’t have a lot of faith in the federal Congress that they’re going to do their job,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told NTD’s “Capitol Report” on Tuesday.
Mr. Knudsen argued TikTok is a component of a larger Chinese campaign of “unrestricted warfare” against the United States, with the popular video-sharing app acting as one tool among several to “undermine our society.”
The burgeoning effort to ban TikTok at the federal level now presents another avenue in which TikTok could be forced to part with its Chinese owners or leave the United States.
“I’m glad Montana was a leader on this. I mean, this is something frankly that Congress should’ve done over a year ago. I’m glad the House has got it right now,” Mr. Knudsen said Tuesday
Attitudes Toward TikTok
On Monday, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives scheduled a vote on the bill to force TikTok to part ways with its Chinese owners or face a ban in the United States. The bill appears set to receive a House floor vote on Wednesday.
For now, Mr. Knudsen is waiting to see where the votes go in a Congress split between a Republican-controlled House and a Democrat-controlled Senate.
“It sounds like it’s probably going to pass the House. I’m dubious about the Senate,” the Montana attorney general said. “Here we are again, I think you’ve got a federal Congress that’s reluctant to do its job here. We have a legitimate national security concern, like TikTok and like communist China.”
TikTok recently launched a campaign urging its users to oppose legislation that could undermine the social media platform’s U.S. operations. Messages appearing on the app have asked users to call their lawmakers and urge them to vote against such legislation.
The two congressmen further argued that if TikTok did not divest from its Chinese ownership, the social media platform effectively “would be choosing” for itself to be barred from U.S. app store services.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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