Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Senator John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, are amongst co-sponsors of the laws. The invoice launched Tuesday would give the president the power to drive the sale of foreign-owned applied sciences, functions, software program or e-commerce platforms in the event that they current a nationwide safety menace to US customers.

It doesn’t point out Beijing-based Bytedance Ltd.’s TikTok by identify however the video-sharing app, which has about 100 million customers within the US, is the clear goal.

“We stay up for proceed working with each Democrats and Republicans on this invoice, and urge Congress to behave shortly to ship it to the president’s desk,” Nationwide Safety Adviser Jake Sullivan mentioned in a press release.

That is the primary time the Biden administration has weighed in on laws to cope with the app, which the White Home says poses nationwide safety dangers. Warner and his co-sponsors have labored intently with the administration for months within the lead-up to the invoice’s introduction.

Additionally learn: US Home bans TikTok on all government-issued units

A invoice like Warner’s might remedy a significant dilemma for the Biden administration. For months, the administration has been making an attempt to return to a national-security cope with TikTok that might restrict China’s means to entry US consumer knowledge. However that course of has stalled amid considerations that it doesn’t sufficiently handle the threats posed.

New ‘Instruments’

“These dangers should not going away and sadly our instruments so far have been restricted,” Warner informed a briefing Tuesday. “We’re going to create a brand new set of authorities.”

TikTok’s opponents in Congress have rejected the corporate’s assurances that its Chinese language proprietor doesn’t have entry to US consumer knowledge, together with viewing patterns and geolocation. As well as, experiences that TikTok promotes or hides sure content material has raised questions on whether or not Chinese language authorities might affect what content material American customers see.

The invoice would nonetheless have to undergo a Senate committee, and it’s unclear the place the measure ranks amongst Chuck Schumer’s priorities. As Senate majority chief, he determines whether or not it could come to the ground for a vote. However anti-China sentiment crosses get together traces in Congress, and senators from each events mentioned Tuesday they have been united on the problem.

“We’re very united on this subject” Senator Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, informed reporters. He mentioned the US must “convey all points of American energy and coverage” to the China problem.

The rising backlash has had TikTok waging an all-out allure offensive globally for months. To drum up goodwill and defend its knowledge safety and content material moderation insurance policies in Washington, executives have enlisted a star-studded group of lobbyists to interact with greater than 100 congressional workplaces. Within the second quarter of final yr, TikTok spent $2.1 million on lobbying on points together with kids’s privateness, content material moderation and antitrust — essentially the most so far.

TikTok has offered a safety plan referred to as Challenge Texas that pledges to insulate the corporate’s US operation from Chinese language affect. The plan consists of an unbiased board of administrators to supervise knowledge safety, third-party vetting and a partnership with Oracle Corp. to retailer consumer knowledge and audit the platform’s algorithms.

“The purpose right here is to have an enormous quantity of oversight,” Will Farrell, who leads TikTok’s US Knowledge Safety group, mentioned at a convention in Washington on Monday. “So that you don’t must take our phrase for it.”