Sen. Hawley Demands Microsoft Describe Undisclosed Plan for Booting China from TikTok

Chip Somodevilla, Getty

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Wednesday demanded that Microsoft detail how it plans to remove TikTok from Chinese control — and expressed skepticism that it was even possible.

In a letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Hawley said it wasn’t clear whether Microsoft was “moving toward a partnership” with TikTok’s Chinese parent company, Bytedance, or planning to take “full and independent control of the app and its data.” He also said he wasn’t convinced “the code Microsoft plans to offer in the United States” would remedy vulnerabilities allowing the Chinese government to target American users.

President Donald Trump has said his administration will move to ban the video-sharing application if Bytedance doesn’t reach a deal for Microsoft to buy it by September 15. Microsoft has expressed interest in an arrangement that would involve taking over TikTok’s operations in the United States in addition to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But the company has not clarified whether it would rebuild the application, or the level of control it would allow Bytedance to retain.

“It is not clear whether the new entity’s operations will be run by former Bytedance engineers who answer to the Chinese government,” Hawley added. “It is not even clear whether the Chinese Communist Party and proxies like Bytedance will be allowed to profit from the final settlement of this inquiry.”

Hawley asked Microsoft to say what steps it would take to ensure the app wouldn’t send user data to the Chinese government, and for more details on what Microsoft would do with the data in terms of its own consumer advertising. He also asked what connection a U.S. version would have with the Chinese version: “Will users of one of the two applications have access to videos from the other? If so, will popular Chinese TikTok videos, potentially promoted by the Chinese Communist Party itself, be promoted to U.S. users?”

That issue in particular could represent a sticking point for the Chinese government, which routinely bans American entertainment from entering the country. Documents leaked from TikTok last year also showed the company instructing moderators to purge content related to topics including the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Falun Gong, a religious group banned in China.

Hawley also asked whether Bytedance would be “allowed to profit” from TikTok’s sale, and whether the U.S. government would receive “an appropriate share” of the acquisition cost. Trump has said his expectation is that “a very substantial portion” of the proceeds from any transaction “come into the Treasury of the United States.”

“Let me be clear: Any resolution of the TikTok investigation that fails to sever all links between TikTok and potential proxies for the Chinese Communist Party, including but not limited to ByteDance, is unacceptable,” Hawley added.