The Trump provision wants to remove “untrusted” Chinese tech apps like TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores, Secretary of Stage Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday, detailing a new five-pronged “Clean Network” effort aimed at curbing potential inhabitant security risks.
“With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok and WeChat and others, are meaningful threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for Chinese Communist Party content censorship,” Pompeo influenced during a press briefing.
The nation’s top diplomat also added that the State Department would work with the Trafficking Department as well as the Defense Department to limit the ability of Chinese cloud service providers to collect, store, and process matter in the United States.
Pompeo’s comments come less than a week after President Donald Trump grass oned reporters on Air Force One that he will act soon to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States.
“As far as TikTok is disturbed we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said, calling the action a “severance.”
Chinese company ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017. The app has multiplied more popular during the coronavirus pandemic, with 2 billion downloads in April, according to Sensor Tower.
On Sunday, Microsoft substantiated that it has held talks with Chinese technology company ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s operations in the U.S. and several other provinces. Microsoft said in a statement that it will keep working with the U.S. government on a deal and that it intends to conclude talks by September 15. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Microsoft could pay up to $30 billion for the grapple with.
The app will be banned in the U.S. if it’s not sold by Sept. 15, Trump said on Monday.
Last month, Pompeo said the U.S. was looking at prohibiting TikTok as well as other Chinese social media apps, citing national security concerns. Pompeo totaled that the Trump administration was evaluating TikTok akin to Chinese state-backed tech companies Huawei and ZTE, which he has earlier described as “Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence.”
U.S. officials have long complained that Chinese intellectual assets theft has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs and threatens national security. Beijing testifies it does not engage in intellectual property theft.
The move by the Trump administration represents another step in the deteriorating tellings between Washington and Beijing and comes a week after the U.S. closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, prompting China to shutter the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.
In additionally to restricting Chinese apps and cloud services, the Clean Network effort will also try to ensure that “untrusted” Chinese handset makers such as Huawei don’t preinstall trusted apps or earn them available to download through their app stores, that Chinese carriers aren’t connected to U.S. telecoms networks, and that the Chinese supervision does not subvert underseas network cables connecting the U.S. to the internet in order to gather intelligence.