TikTok isn’t the only China-backed app the White House is worried about

THE White House and Congress are working to blunt the national-security risk from various Chinese social-media apps, beyond just Washington’s recent high-profile target TikTok, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

The national-security concerns “aren’t just limited to TikTok”, she said in an interview on Thursday (Mar 2). “If what we’re worried about is Chinese-backed companies being on tens of millions of American phones, including members of the military and privacy concerns, data concerns, misinformation concerns — it doesn’t just apply to TikTok.”

Raimondo, who said she’s considering a trip to China this year, is among top officials in President Joe Biden’s cabinet driving efforts to counter what they see as rising economic and strategic threats from Beijing.

Her department issued broad export controls on chipmaking technology to China last year, and is leading the way in pouring about US$52 billion into the US semiconductor industry, which she frames as a key national-security resource.

“There have been times in America’s history of intense global competition with another superpower who does not share our values,” she said in the interview at Bloomberg’s office in Washington. “This is one of those times.”

Raimondo also said the administration is working carefully on scrutinising outbound investment into certain industries in China, but cautioned that the work would be slow given the risk of broader, unintended consequences, particularly impacts on pension and retirement funds.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

She said afterwards that a pilot programme on outbound investment is “doable”, though would still need to be devised, and that overall, procedures to evaluate outbound investment should take “months, not years” to establish.

“We’re on it every day, talking with industry, talking with stakeholders,” she said.

In the interview, Raimondo said: “We want commerce, we want trade, we want global investment. Anything that’s overly broad hurts American workers and the economy.”

However, American officials “don’t want the best US venture-capitalist minds, know-how and money advancing semiconductor technology or artificial-intelligence technology that China’s going to use in their military”, she said.

There are multiple proposals in Congress that seek to limit TikTok in the US, including a bill from House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul that would authorise Biden to ban the app. The company’s operations in the US are also under scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US — known as Cfius — which is led by the Treasury Department.

“There’s a number of members in the US Senate who are thinking hard about what’s the right way to protect American national security,” she said. “We will work with Congress to figure out the right way to legislate to protect America from these concerns.”

Raimondo said in an interview last month that “passing a law to ban a single company is not the way to deal with this issue”, citing concerns about freedom of speech and its popularity with young voters, and that “the politician in me thinks you’re gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever”.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is hugely popular in the US, especially among teens. But officials say there’s a potential security threat if the app is used to gather user data or a tool for propaganda.

CEO caution

On the domestic front, Raimondo said the top concern among US chief executives is a lack of workers with the necessary skills, adding that they’ve been telling her: “We can’t hire enough, we can’t hire fast enough, we can’t hire people with the skills we need.”

“By and large, CEOs are optimistic, but nervous, cautious,” she said, citing worries over several issues, including higher interest rates, China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and climate change. BLOOMBERG