Florida's Senior Senator has been sounding off about TikTok for half a decade now, expressing concerns about Chinese ownership.
Yet finally, it appears U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio's position regarding the controversial tech app has been vindicated.
"For years, we've allowed the Chinese Communist Party to control one of the most popular apps in America. That was dangerously shortsighted, but thankfully we are waking up to the threat China-controlled companies pose to America," Rubio said.
"We must move more quickly in the future when we encounter similar threats, because China won't give up. There will be lawsuits, new apps, and new plots from Beijing."
Over the weekend, the House passed a measure banning China's ByteDance from owning the app as part of larger foreign aid legislation, giving a year for the company to divest. The Senate is expected to pass the bill imminently. For its part, TikTok says it will be "exercising our legal rights" once it becomes law.
Rubio has held forth for years about the dangers of Chinese interests having access to sensitive data through the app, one used primarily by younger people.
"The danger posed by Chinese-owned applications like TikTok and WeChat is that the Chinese Communist Party can force these companies to turn over Americans' user data the company collects and manipulate what users see or don't see," he said in 2020, lauding then-President Donald Trump for attempting a ban, which was later thrown out in court. Trump has also now entirely reversed his position on TikTok.
"We cannot pretend that TikTok and other Chinese-owned companies are not beholden to the CCP," Rubio wrote to CIA Director William Burns in 2021.
"TikTok poses a potential threat to personal privacy and our national security interests. There is absolutely no reason why this application, which Beijing can use to advance its malign foreign policy initiatives, should be utilized on federal devices. In its current form, this platform is not safe," Rubio said in 2021, backing legislation to ban the app from governmental devices.
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