For most of the tech industry, this summer was a season of economic uncertainty – one that led to a drop in bitcoin prices, hundreds of laid-off workers, and a hiring freeze. For the video platform TikTok, it was also the summer that US regulators crossed the aisle to come to something of a consensus: it was time for stricter rules.

Since Buzzfeed reported in June that employees of TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance had access to US consumer data, TikTok has been the focus of rare bipartisan calls for regulation and inquiry.

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“If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data,” Wray said. “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours.”

The China question

TikTok is a relatively new player in the arena of massive global social media platforms but it’s already caught the eye of regulators in Europe. New laws around child safety and general internet safety in the UK and the EU have forced the company to become more transparent about the way it operates and the way content spreads on its platform.

In the US, moves to rein in the video platform have gained momentum only relatively recently, although there’s little debate that the round of regulatory pressure is warranted. With 1 billion users, the platform, which uses an algorithmic feed to push users short-form videos, has had its fair share of run-ins with misinformation, data privacy and concerns about child safety.

Among the issues US lawmakers are most publicly focused on is the app’s connection to China.

TikTok has always said that the data of its US users is stored in data centers in Virginia, and backed up in Singapore. In June, the company announced that all US user data would be routed through servers from the American computing giant Oracle.

But recordings of TikTok executives leaked to BuzzFeed News suggest that China-based ByteDance employees accessed US user data multiple times between September 2021 and January 2022. “Everything is seen in China,” one TikTok employee reportedly said in a meeting.

Among the issues US lawmakers are most publicly focused on is TikTok’s connection to China. Photograph: Tingshu Wang/Reuters

After that report, members of Congress sprang into action. On 23 June, a bipartisan group of five senators proposed a new bill that would prohibit companies from sending the data of American users to “high risk foreign countries”.

And in July, Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio called for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to open an investigation into TikTok.

“TikTok, their parent company ByteDance, and other China-based tech companies are required by Chinese law to share their information with the Communist party,” Warner said. “Allowing access to American data, down to biometrics such as face prints and voiceprints, poses a great risk to not only individual privacy but to national security.”

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said the BuzzFeed News story marked a turning point in lawmakers’ approach to TikTok. “What really changed things was it wasn’t people theorizing or government officials saying stuff in talking points that you weren’t really sure if there was any there, there. This was a report that had internal communications and leaked audio of internal meetings … that just blew the doors off of all of [TikTok’s] representations about how it handled data and showed it to be gaslighting.”

Carr, who has advocated for Google and Apple to boot TikTok from their stores, said the revelations made the national security concerns with TikTok more real than ever before, and brought people across the aisle together.

“People can look at me and say, you’re a Republican, you’re a member of the FCC, I don’t believe you for these reasons. But Mark Warner is a serious national security stalwart. He gets daily briefings on this. And he’s out there saying that TikTok scares the dickens out of him.”

TikTok said US legislators’ national security concerns were overblown, and that the platform does not share user data with the Chinese government. “Nor would we if asked,” said company spokesperson Maureen Shanahan.

Shanahan said the company has talked openly about its efforts to limit employees’ access to US user data and the BuzzFeed News report shows TikTok is “doing what it said it was going to”.

Allowing access to American data, down to biometrics such as face prints and voiceprints, poses a great risk to not only individual privacy but to national security

Senator Mark Warner

“In 2021, TikTok engaged consultants to help assess how to limit data access to US user data,” Shanaha