Bipartisan group of senators unveil bill targeting TikTok, other foreign tech companies
CBSN
Washington — A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill Tuesday that would give the executive branch new powers to take action against tech companies with ties to foreign adversaries and cut them off from the U.S. market, a measure that would allow the Biden administration to eventually ban Chinese-owned TikTok and other tech products in the name of protecting national security.
The legislation — titled the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act — would apply to technology tied to China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela that "poses an undue or unacceptable risk" to national security.
"Today everybody is talking about TikTok. But before there was TiKTok, there was Huawei and ZTE. Before that, there was Russia's Kaspersky Labs," Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the bill's lead sponsors, said at the Capitol, referencing previous action to block technology from other Chinese and Russian firms.
