The Trump administration banned TikTok via an Executive Order in 2020 due to national security concerns over the Chinese-owned platform which was collecting data on millions of users. In June of 2021, President Joe Biden issued an order that revoked Trump’s bans of TikTok and WeChat.

Ironically, Biden’s executive order, released June 9 of 2021 was titled “Executive Order on Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries.” And the cycle repeats, with the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking for a ban.

The Foreign Desk reports: “In light of national security threats posed by TikTok, Commissioner Brendan Carr called on both Apple and Google to ban TikTok in their app stores.” Carr sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on June 24, citing security issues.

Carr highlighted on Twitter: “TikTok is not just another video app;” “That’s the sheep’s clothing;” and “It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.”

Replying to Carr’s post, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also wrote, “For YEARS, @BrendanCarrFCC & I have been warning about Communist China using TikTok to steal American technology and data and the dangerous threat this app poses.”

Carr’s letter specified that TikTok is owned by Beijing-based Byte Dance—an organization that abides by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surveillance demands.

“Bipartisan leaders in both the Senate and House have flagged concerns,” Carr said.

Carr also noted in the letter that U.S. military branches; and national security agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the TSA have banned TikTok. Military troops and their dependents are also urged to erase the app from their personal phones.

Carr demanded in the letter that both Apple and Google respond by July 8, 2022, in the event TikTok is not removed from the app stores, with “the basis for your company’s conclusion that the surreptitious access of private and sensitive U.S. user data by persons located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok’s pattern of misleading representations and conduct, does not run afoul of any of your app store policies.”

Carr also mentioned in his letter, TikTok agreed to pay $92 million in 2021 to settle lawsuits alleging that the app “clandestinely vacuumed up and transferred to servers in China (and to other servers accessible from within China) vast quantities of private and personally identifiable user data and content that could be employed to identify, profile, and track the physical and digital location and activities of United States users now and in the future.”