On Wednesday, President Joe Biden overturned and amended three executive orders issued by former President Donald Trump in September last year. These orders aimed to restrict American businesses from transacting with TikTok and WeChat. The ban was met with a slew of court challenges and never went into effect.
On the other hand, Biden is pushing for his own investigation into the hazards of foreign-controlled mobile apps sending data to US rivals. This might entail issuing future executive orders to protect US personal data from falling into the hands of the wrong people. Mr Biden stated that it should take an “evidence-based approach” to determine if they pose a threat to US national security.
The order does not explain why Biden is revoking Trump’s prior move to restrict TikTok and WeChat, two Chinese-created apps. However, it is no secret that the move was delayed in the courts due to concerns they infringed on free speech rights.
The decision does not particularly target any firms. Instead, it orders the Commerce Department to assess all applications that may have links to foreign adversaries, including China. This includes steps to secure data on US individuals obtained by the apps.
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Nonetheless, the directive makes no mention of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States or CFIUS. CFIUS imposed multiple deadlines for apps like TikTok to divest themselves from their Chinese owner ByteDance during the Trump administration.
Oracle was supposedly ready to purchase TikTok for several months in order to avoid the former administration’s prohibition, but the deal never materialised.
The scope and scale of TikTok’s app’s data collection make it easier for Chinese spies to answer all kinds of different intelligence questions on U.S. nationals. U.S. tech companies like Facebook and Google also collect large amounts of user data. But that there are greater concerns on how (China) in particular could use all that information collected against populations other than its own.
Anne Neuberger, NSA’s director of Cybersecurity
Notably, price of Tencent shares increased following reports that US President Joe Biden had replaced his predecessor’s orders. What do you think of President Biden’s move? Do let us know in the comments.
