Republican lawmakers asked President Joe Biden to force a divestiture of TikTok to an American firm after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) concluded that the social media platform poses meaningful national security risks.
CFIUS, a board composed of nine cabinet-level officials who weigh the national security implications of international investments, recently ordered ByteDance, the Chinese technology firm which owns TikTok, to sell the platform or face a nationwide ban.
The agency initially concluded after a national security review in 2020 that TikTok could “impair the national security of the United States,” a revelation that nearly prompted former President Donald Trump to ban the platform via executive order.