Two U.S. senators said today that sometime this week, they will introduce a new bill that would make it easier to “ban or prohibit” foreign technology in the U.S., which, if endorsed by the administration, could spell the end for the popular Chinese social media app, TikTok.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Virginia, has been working on the bill with Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota. Warner said the bill will address the current threat from foreign apps. For years now, ByteDance Ltd.-owned TikTok has wrestled with U.S. politicians, always denying that is in cahoots with the Chinese Communist Party and is spying on Americans.

The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok outright, which didn’t work out. More recently, the app has seen various bans, including a U.S. House of Representatives ban late last year on using it on House-issued mobile phones. The European Commission and Canada have also recently joined in, prohibiting TikTok on government-issued devices.

The immensely popular app has survived, in part no doubt because of its popularity with 100 million American users but also because a smoking gun has never been discovered that can prove it’s a spying app for the Chinese government. Warner has said that if the bill does receive the backing of the current administration, then getting TikTok out of the U.S., smoking gun or no smoking gun, will be much easier.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Warner admitted what everyone has been thinking, that banning TikTok and perhaps other foreign tech in the future is not just about spying. National security is also tied up with economics. “China is investing in economic areas, they have $500 billion in intellectual property theft, and we are in a competition not just on a national security basis, [but] on a technology basis,” Warner said.

He said spying is a threat, but so is China using TikTok as a “propaganda tool” to promote Chinese government ideology. It’s no secret that the U.S. has tried in earnest to set back the Chinese economy, last year introducing new rules in an effort to cripple China’s high-tech manufacturing industry by making it hard for China to import chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

“We hope that Congress will explore solutions to their national security concerns that won’t have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans,” a TikTok spokesperson said in response to the proposed legislation. “We hope that politicians with national security concerns will encourage the administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok.”

Photo: Solen Feyissa/Flickr