Coming Soon: A Supreme Court Ruling on TikTok, China and National Security

EXPERT INTERVIEWS — Does Chinese ownership of the wildly popular TikTok app pose a national security risk to the United States? And if so, what should be done about it? The twin questions have occupied the Biden Administration and the U.S. Congress since last spring, when President Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it found a new, non-Chinese owner. Later this week, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the law’s constitutionality, ahead of the January 19 date when the ban is to go into effect. 

The case before the court – Garland v TikTok – pits the Biden administration against TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese entity which argues that the law violates the First Amendment. The Biden administration says the law has nothing to do with free speech but is a matter of national security, given the possibility that reams of data collected by TikTok’s owners will be used by the government of China.