Exclusive – FCC’s Brendan Carr: Pass the Bill to Ban TikTok

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr told Breitbart News on Sunday that Congress should pass a bill that would ban TikTok in the United States.

The bill, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” has passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and enjoys bipartisan support. It would ban TikTok in the U.S., as well as any other applications owned by a foreign “adversary,” and require companies controlling such applications to provide all user data to American users upon request.

Carr recently wrote an op-ed at Newsmax explaining that the problems with TikTok go far beyond privacy concerns, and include national security risks “because the average TikTok user is far more likely to be exposed to content favorable to the CCP than a user of other major social media.” China is, in effect, indoctrinating American users.

These arguments echo those in Peter Schweizer’s new book: Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, which argues that China uses TikTok and other platforms in a psychological warfare effort.

,”There’s something very unique and different about TikTok,” Carr said, noting that the Chinese-owned company not only poses a “surveillance” risk, but also a cultural risk, as it persuades Americans — particularly young people — to indulge in damaging behaviors and embrace radical ideas.

Carr spoke to Breitbart News Sunday, which airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 on Sunday evenings from 7-10 p.m. ET.

Carr, known as a free speech advocate, said the issue of TikTok is different because the government would be regulating the conduct of the company, not the content of posts on the platform.

“If TikTok was simply a platform where people could speak their mind, get all sort of content, that’d be one thing,” he said. “But because TikTok has engaged in espionage, it has admitted that it was spying on journalists in the U.S. that were writing negative stories about TikTok, they [are] in a situation where the First Amendment does not require the government to allow the national security risk to persist.

He cited Supreme Court precedent that, he said, would uphold federal restrictions on TikTok, which would take effect under the bill unless the parent company, Bytedance, cut all of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Asked about former President Donald Trump’s opposition to banning TikTok, on the argument that doing so would made Facebook stronger, Carr acknowledged that there is still an “accumulation of power in Silicon Valley that we still need to deal with as well,” regardless of TikTok’s fate.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.