Marco Rubio says China ‘on the clock’ after TikTok divestiture order

Florida’s senior Senator has been sounding off about TikTok for half a decade now, expressing concerns about Chinese ownership.

Yet finally, it appears U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s position regarding the controversial tech app has been vindicated, with the Senator claiming legislation signed by President Joe Biden will finally create a mechanism to counter Chinese influence.

“TikTok extended the Chinese Communist Party’s power and influence into our own nation, right under our noses. I have been raising concerns about TikTok since 2019, so this new law forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok is a huge step toward confronting Beijing’s malign influence. It’s official: Communist China is on the clock,” Rubio, who voted against the larger package containing the bill, said Wednesday.

Over the weekend, the House passed a measure banning China’s ByteDance from owning the app as part of larger foreign aid legislation, giving a year for the company to divest. The Senate followed suit Tuesday. For its part, TikTok says it will be “exercising our legal rights” once it becomes law.

Rubio has held forth for years about the dangers of Chinese interests having access to sensitive data through the app, one used primarily by younger people.

“The danger posed by Chinese-owned applications like TikTok and WeChat is that the Chinese Communist Party can force these companies to turn over Americans’ user data the company collects and manipulate what users see or don’t see,” he said in 2020, lauding then-President Donald Trump for attempting a ban, which was later thrown out in court. Trump has also now entirely reversed his position on TikTok.

“We cannot pretend that TikTok and other Chinese-owned companies are not beholden to the CCP,” Rubio wrote to CIA Director William Burns in 2021.

“TikTok poses a potential threat to personal privacy and our national security interests. There is absolutely no reason why this application, which Beijing can use to advance its malign foreign policy initiatives, should be utilized on federal devices. In its current form, this platform is not safe,” Rubio said in 2021, backing legislation to ban the app from governmental devices.