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WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok, and ordered a review of security concerns posed by those apps and others.
The administration of former President Donald Trump had attempted to block new users from downloading the apps and ban other technical transactions of the Chinese-owned short video-sharing app. The courts blocked those orders, which never took effect.
The Biden order directs the Commerce Department to monitor software applications like TikTok that could affect US national security, as well as to make recommendations within 120 days to protect US data acquired or accessible by companies controlled by foreign adversaries.
WeChat, which has been downloaded at least 19 million times by US users, is widely used as a medium for services, games and payments. Biden’s new executive order revokes the WeChat and TikTok orders Trump issued in August, along with another in January that targeted eight other communications and financial technology software applications.
The January Trump order directed officials to ban transactions with eight Chinese apps including Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings’ QQ Wallet and WeChat pay.
READ MORE: US Judge halts Trump administration’s ban on WeChat downloads
The Trump administration contended that WeChat and TikTok posed national security concerns because sensitive personal data of US users could be collected by China’s government. Both TikTok, which has over 100 million users in the United States, and WeChat have denied posing national security concerns.
The Trump administration had appealed judicial orders blocking the bans on TikTok and WeChat, but after Biden took office in January, the US Justice Department asked to pause the appeals.
Biden’s order says collecting data from Americans “threatens to provide foreign adversaries with access to that information.” The order directs the Commerce Department to “evaluate on a continuing basis” any transactions that “pose an undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of the critical infrastructure or digital economy of the United States.”
Biden’s executive order requires within 60 days that US intelligence and Homeland Security agencies provide vulnerability and threat assessments on US data controlled by foreign adversaries to the Commerce Department as it conducts its review.
Last week, Biden signed an executive order that bans US investment in certain Chinese companies in the defense and surveillance technology sectors.
