SAFETY FIRST

FCC Commissioner Is Doing Everything He Can to Ban TikTok

Brendan Carr said he’s worried about national security and political interference.

Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners for the Federal Communications Commission, isn’t mincing his words on TikTok. “I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” he told Axios on Tuesday. Carr has already sent Apple and Google letters asking them to pull the app from stores, and he called on the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a committee that reviews foreign business deals for national security risks, to shut the wildly popular app down. TikTok has been under a microscope since reports came out in June that Chinese parent company ByteDance had accessed American users’ data. TikTok is negotiating with the CFIUS to decide if it can divest from ByteDance in the U.S. A TikTok spokesperson said Carr “has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner.”