Venture investors, U.S. lawmakers join forces to fight Tiktok & Chinese influence: WSJ

A star-studded array of Silicon Valley task investors person joined forces with a bipartisan radical of U.S. lawmakers arsenic portion of a moving radical that has 1 aim: Combatting China's power successful the U.S. exertion industry, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The consortium is named the Hill & Valley Forum, the Journal reported, a motion to the group's bicoastal origins. The Forum volition big a meal up of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's Congressional grounds adjacent week, with speakers including salient task capitalists Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla, the Journal reported.

Representatives for Thiel and Khosla weren't instantly disposable for comment.

TikTok's imaginable power implicit the American zeitgeist, peculiarly among younger oregon under-age citizens, has progressively acrophobic lawmakers and regulators, who fearfulness that the app's Chinese ownership exposes American users susceptible to China's intelligence-gathering efforts.

Former Google planetary argumentation advisor Jacob Helberg, who is starring the alliance, told the Journal that TikTok represents "the astir potent espionage cognition that China has ever carried retired against the U.S."

TikTok's popularity exploded during covid lockdowns. By 2021, TikTok's Chinese genitor institution Bytedance said the app had reached 1 cardinal monthly progressive users, showing crisp maturation from Dec. 2019, erstwhile it reported 507 cardinal monthly users.

Now, lawmakers, task investors, and lobbyists are pushing for the authorities to prohibition oregon curtail the app's influence, citing a potent menace from the Chinese government.

The Committee connected Foreign Investment successful the United States, oregon CFIUS, told ByteDance that unless the company's Chinese owners divested from their stakes, CFIUS would determination to prohibition the app, the institution told CNBC connected Thursday. The ultimatum came weeks aft lawmakers urged the Committee to implicit its yearslong probe into TikTok.

A TikTok spokesperson wasn't instantly disposable for comment.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal.