Recently, TikTok employees attempting to enter the United States were singled out for questioning by US Customs – whether they have access to sensitive US data and whether they are members of the Chinese Communist Party. Many of these employees are Chinese.
Over the past few years, TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have been under strict scrutiny by US regulatory agencies, as authorities are concerned that the app could allow the Chinese Communist Party to steal sensitive personal data from Americans and promote the CCP’s ideology.
At multiple hearings, lawmakers have questioned company executives about whether they employ CCP members and the extent of their influence on company decisions if they are hired.
At a hearing in January this year, Senator Tom Cotton repeatedly pressed TikTok CEO Shouzi Chew on whether he was a CCP member, despite Chew’s insistence that he is a Singaporean married to an American.
On Tuesday (April 30), Forbes learned from knowledgeable sources that over thirty TikTok employees were stopped at the border when entering the US and faced similar inquiries from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
According to sources, many of these employees are Chinese, employed by ByteDance and TikTok, working in various capacities including data engineering and machine learning.
CBP officers posed questions to these employees mainly concerning the relationship between TikTok and ByteDance, as well as the companies’ spending of billions of dollars to block US TikTok user data from Chinese employees, a practice internally referred to as “Project Texas”.
In 2023, in order to prevent TikTok from being forcibly separated from ByteDance and sold to a US company, TikTok promoted its “Project Texas” collaboration with Oracle, supposedly to establish a “firewall” between US users and the CCP without changing TikTok’s ownership. However, the project was criticized for making TikTok’s denial of CCP access to American user data untenable.
Despite TikTok CEO Shouzi Chew’s testimony in Congress in March 2023 that “US data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore,” information including bank details and social security numbers of creators and advertisers is stored in China.
Sources tell Fox that CBP officers questioned these employees about their access to US TikTok user data, the location of the company’s US data centers, and their involvement in the “Project Texas”.
Employees were also asked personal questions such as whether they are CCP members, and about their educational and political affiliations in China. A source told Forbes that officers used a specially printed list of questions to interrogate TikTok employees.
While CBP questions TikTok employees, inquiries at US borders for Chinese students and scholars (especially those involved in scientific research) have also increased, indicating growing concerns about technological espionage from the CCP.
These students and researchers were also asked about their academic work and connections to the CCP.
Meanwhile, foreign employees of TikTok and ByteDance are finding it increasingly difficult to work in the US. Internal documents reviewed by Forbes show that company policy limits all trips to the US for work to 30 days.
Last week, the Biden administration took a historic step by signing a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok, requiring its removal from all US app stores within 270 days unless ByteDance separates from it (or the court blocks the law from taking effect).
Simultaneously, TikTok and ByteDance face multiple other legal challenges from the US government.
After ByteDance admitted to surveilling American citizens through TikTok, the US Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into the company in 2023.
In addition, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been investigating ByteDance and its acquisition of Musical.ly (which eventually became a TikTok app) since 2019. Last year, CFIUS adopted a position now law – TikTok should be separated from ByteDance, otherwise the app should be disabled.