Brendan Carr, a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, said the Council on Foreign Investment in the United States should initiate action to ban the social media platform TikTok due to concerns over the security of data of U.S. users, Axios reported Wednesday.
He told Axios in an interview about the potential for China to gain access to U.S. data and the risk of influencing U.S. political processes by a state actor through the video-hosting service.
“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Carr told the publication.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is in talks with CFIUS to determine whether it can keep operating in the U.S. through a potential divestiture to a U.S. company.
“We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns,” a spokesperson for TikTok said in a statement to Axios.
In September, a Senate panel held a hearing over the video platform’s access to U.S. user data and links to the Chinese government.
