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Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Select Intelligence Committee, highlighted the concern that TikTok was ‘operating at the direction of a foreign adversary.’

The U.S. Senate passed, 79-18, the TikTok divest-or-ban bill included in a foreign aid package on Tuesday.

The bill will give ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, a year to sell the App, or the app will be banned from mobile app stores and web-hosting services.

The House version of the foreign aid package was passed on Saturday. With the Senate’s blessing, the bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. The president has said he would sign it into law.

The debate around the TikTok bill was about national security and free speech.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Select Intelligence Committee, highlighted the concern that TikTok was “operating at the direction of a foreign adversary.”

“It’s not hard to imagine how a platform that facilitates so much commerce, political discourse, and social debate could be covertly manipulated to serve the goals of an authoritarian regime, one with a long track record of censorship, transnational repression, and promotion of disinformation,” Mr. Warner said.

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He also mentioned the Chinese embassy’s lobbying effort against the TikTok bill.

“In recent weeks, we’ve seen direct lobbying by the Chinese government, indicating, perhaps more than anything we’ll say on the floor here, how dearly Xi Jinping is invested in this product. A product, by the way, is not even allowed to operate in the Chinese domestic market itself,” Mr. Warner said.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, quoted the Department of Justice’s statement, “Hostile foreign powers are weaponizing bulk data and the power of artificial intelligence to target Americans.”

To Ms. Cantwell, the TikTok divest-or-ban requirement is a “de-weaponization” to stop an export-controlled algorithm owned by a Chinese company from accessing American consumer data.

According to China’s Counterespionage Law, ByteDance must legally hand over its American user data if authorities request it.

TikTok has repeatedly maintained that it is independent from its Chinese parent company. According to TikTok, its U.S. customer data are stored in Virginia and backed up in Singapore, and it has never, and will never, share its U.S. data with the Chinese regime.

To address the data security concern, TikTok rolled out “Project Texas” in July 2022—a proposal for Texas-based Oracle to store TikTok data and review its code and software.

However, Mr. Warner said the project “does not resolve the United States national security concern about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok” because it would “still allow TikTok’s algorithm, source code, and development activities to remain in China” and “under ByteDance control and subject to the Chinese government’s exploitation.”

He emphasized to young people that the bill was not a ban and that TikTok could still exist after the sale.

However, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) argued that a sale would be so difficult and expensive that it is “next to impossible.” Therefore, the bill is a ban.

While acknowledging the national security threats, Mr. Markey warned about the consequences of banning TikTok in his view: impeding free speech and spreading censorship.

When TikTok released a statement on Sunday night, a day after the House passed the foreign aid package, the company said it would resort to legal means on First Amendment grounds once the TikTok divest-or-ban bill becomes law.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told The Epoch Times that they don’t think TikTok has a free speech case.

“They have an allegiance to the Chinese government, and that’s the issue here,” Mr. Fetterman said about the company, adding that TikTok would be fine “if they’re willing to free themselves from that.”

Stacy Robinson contributed to this report.