Sen. Warner: Someone other than China should own TikTok

WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — While voicing support for a ban on the social media app TikTok, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told NewsNation he doesn’t want to see that app disappear; he just doesn’t want it “controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

“I absolutely believe that it shouldn’t go away,” Warner said on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “It just shouldn’t be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. And regardless of what the CEO says, Chinese law dictates that every company’s first obligation in China, and ByteDance is a Chinese company, is not to shareholders and not to customers, but to the Communist Party.”

The U.S. House approved a plan Wednesday to ban the social media app, but there is still a long road ahead before it’s potentially implemented. The proposal would ban the app in the U.S. unless it divests from its China-based owner as lawmakers express concern over national security threats. The Senate could put the ban up for a vote next week.

Lawmakers have consistently raised concerns that TikTok, one of the world’s most popular apps, threatens Americans’ sensitive information.

“For 170 million Americans, all of that data that is being collected,” said Warner. “(That data) ultimately could be used for nefarious purposes. We’ve seen the Chinese spy services try to blackmail people in the past. The idea that this data is going to potentially reside in Beijing ought to scare the dickens out of everybody.”

China has repeatedly downplayed U.S. lawmakers’ rhetoric about the app.

Mao Ning, the deputy director of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, previously said that the U.S. government “has been overstretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress other countries’ companies.” In a further jibe, Ning questioned why the U.S. would “fear a young person’s favorite app to such a degree?”

Warner stressed that he doesn’t have an issue with the app itself — just its ties to China.

“I didn’t want it to go away. I just liked it to be owned by somebody other than the Chinese,” said Warner. “It doesn’t have to be Americans, it could be Brits. It could be Brazilians. It could be French, but it ought to be somebody that is not an authoritarian regime.”

The United States, Britain, and New Zealand’s parliaments have banned the use of TikTok on government-issued phones. India has banned TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps, including the WeChat message service, on security and privacy grounds.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.