Hey Senator, is TikTok a national security threat to the United States?

On Monday afternoon, I asked twenty-three United States Senators what seemed like a fairly straightforward question — Senator, Is TikTok a national security threat to the United States?

VERBATIM. Their responses ran that same evening in Capitol Press , my underdog newsletter on Congress with Arturo Dominguez. Given the big House vote against TikTok expected for later today, I'm cross-posting their responses here for awareness. Feel free to share them far and wide.

• TL;DR.?No Senator said outright that TikTok is not national security threat, though several told me ByteDance, the Chinese firm that owns TikTok, is a problem. Only Tom Cotton (R-AR) declined to give any TikTok take, at all. "No comment," said the Arksansas Republican and left it at that.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)

“I do believe they’re a risk factor. The way they collect information—utilize information—is against our national security interests. So yes, I do think they represent a threat.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)

“I think data harvesting, manipulation of the algorithm and so forth, certainly pose a national security problem […] I think the concern you always have is are you creating an authority to do something reasonable on TikTok that might be abused in some other way.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN)

“What we need to do is figure out what needs to be prohibited in certain applications rather than naming certain applications, right? That’s the approach we need to take.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

“I don’t know. That’s what we want to look at in terms of national security and privacy–both of those issues.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

“I know they have the possibility to gain a lot of data from us and that concerns me. I don’t know how much of that is military or intelligence-related. I just don’t know that.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

“Yes.”

Sen. Deb Fisher (R-NE)

“Yes.”

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR)

“For most of the accounts that I’ve heard, I think that’s true. I have a lot of concern about this.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)

“I’ve been asking for briefings to get more information. I came from the cloud computing business. I used to run hosted operations so I continued to do factfinding on that. Got concerns But I want to get the facts.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI)

“I haven’t decided yet. It’s a serious question.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

“I haven’t studied it enough.”

Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV)

“I think the fact that it’s controlling a lot of our kids and it’s owned by China is a real problem I think it’s a threat.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

“I think there’s reason to be concerned about TikTok for the next president and if that is the way it’s been done in the past, you shouldn’t discriminate. It’s just because I’ve read it in the past but I’m not up to date on it.

“The concern is, I think that their parent company has members of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) who have access to their data. But again, I ask you not to quote me on that because I have not reviewed this lately. I’ve gotten three questions about TikTok all of a sudden and I haven’t thought about it in a while.

“I think it’s better to say that if there are legitimate concerns that their data is being accessed by the CCP, that would make them almost automatically a national security concern.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)

“I think it’s important to recognize that no one is suggesting shutting down TikTok. The question is, should it be managed by the Chinese Communist Party in terms of gathering data or manipulating algorithms? The answer is that it should not be under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. It should be sold to an American enterprise or American investors. It’s not going away. It’s going to stay. It’s going to be a competitor to Facebook. The idea ‘oh, that this is going to be making [Mark] Zuckerberg more powerful,’ no, it’ll actually make him weaker because it’d be more effectively run if it’s not run by the Chinese Communist Party.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)

“I'm sufficiently concerned that I favor restricting it when it comes to government communication networks. I'm still looking through the various issues relating to what this bill does and other kind of content.”

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC)

“It's very concerning.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY)

“Well, there's certainly the potential if the Chinese Communist Party is getting access to our information.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

“What's the threat is the potential fidelity. There's a data issue. And there's an algorithm issue that we've got to figure out how to solve so that we protect Americans and that includes TikTok, but if not expressly limited to TikTok”

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS)

“I think it could be. I'm certainly even more concerned that it's a threat to our youth and teaches them things he shouldn’t be taught and I'm ready for it to be taken down at least temporarily.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

“You know, there are some concerns relating to the possibility that TikTok will be able to give access to information that a Chinese-owned company or the Chinese government shouldn’t have, but it's not something that I think we should just broadly assume that all of this is happening. So there are some issues.”

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO)

“It doesn't appear to be at this moment, but it certainly could be. I haven't seen any evidence has been used in nefarious ways. That said, we don't know. It certainly could be. I think that's a relevant issue here is that Republicans and Democrats both agree that it's not hard to imagine a place where the information being amalgamated by TikTok couldn't be used against us.”

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE)

“It’s obviously not a good thing. It makes our entire country vulnerable.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)

“No comment.”

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