📺 Stream EntrepreneurTV for Free 📺

Report: An FCC Commissioner Thinks the U.S. Should Ban TikTok In an interview on Tuesday, Brendan Carr, one of the five Federal Communications Commission's commissioners, said that a foreign investment regulator should ban TikTok.

By Gabrielle Bienasz

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Kevin Dietsch I Getty Images
Brendan Carr, Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, testifying before Congress in March 2022.

In an interview with Axios on Tuesday, one of the five Federal Communications Communication's (FCC) commissioners, Brendan Carr, said that the U.S. should ban TikTok, the widely popular short-form video app with approximately 1 billion users worldwide.

Although the FCC can't take such an action, Carr suggested that the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), a different governmental body that can regulate foreign investment, should ban the app.

"I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," he told the outlet.

Carr was referring to the risk of TikTok sending U.S. user data back to China, which has come up, as the outlet noted, in recent news reports, which have claimed TikTok's Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, planned to monitor some U.S. citizen's locations and accessed other user data.

There is no "world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it's not finding its way back into the hands" of China's Communist Party, he told Axios.

As the outlet noted, TikTok is presently in discussions with the CFIUS, mainly on whether or how it could separate from ByteDance and become a U.S. company to continue serving users.

TikTok told Entrepreneur via email: "Commissioner Carr has no role in the confidential discussions with the US government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner. We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns."

Politicians from across the aisle have raised issues about security on TikTok, and in 2016, then President Donald Trump also considered banning the app.

Gabrielle Bienasz is a staff writer at Entrepreneur. She previously worked at Insider and Inc. Magazine. 

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Side Hustle

These Coworkers-Turned-Friends Started a Side Hustle on Amazon — Now It's a 'Full Hustle' Earning Over $20 Million a Year: 'Jump in With Both Feet'

Achal Patel and Russell Gong met at a large consulting firm and "bonded over a shared vision to create a mission-led company."

Business News

These Are the 10 Most Profitable Cities for Airbnb Hosts, According to a New Report

Here's where Airbnb property owners and hosts are making the most money.

Business News

Samsung's New Ad Pokes Fun at Apple's Controversial 'Crush' Ad

Creative universes overlap in a new ad from Samsung.

Starting a Business

This Couple Turned Their Startup Into a $150 Million Food Delivery Company. Here's What They Did Early On to Make It Happen.

Selling only online to your customers has many perks. But the founders of Little Spoon want you to know four things if you want to see accelerated growth.

Productivity

Want to Be More Productive? Here's How Google Executives Structure Their Schedules

These five tactics from inside Google will help you focus and protect your time.