President Joe Biden signed into law on Wednesday legislation that provides billions of dollars in aid to several countries and forces TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company or face being banned in the United States.
The law provides $60 billion for Ukraine, $17 billion for Israel, $9 billion for humanitarian aid, and $8 billion to support Taiwan. A separate bill that Biden signed forces TikTok to be sold off from ByteDance, which is controlled by communist China.
Biden said signing the law was a “good day for world peace” and that it would “make America safer” as he spoke about the support it provides to America’s partners and allies.
When speaking about the support that the bill provided to Israel, Biden highlighted Iran’s decades-long support for Islamic terrorist groups throughout the region.
The president then referenced the crisis on the U.S. southern border that worsened during the Biden administration after it reversed Trump-era policies.
“But there’s one thing this bill does not do: Border security,” Biden said. “You know, just this year I proposed and negotiated and agreed to the strongest border security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen.”
“It should have been included in this bill,” he continued. “And I’m determined to get it done for the American people.”
The bill that Biden backed was widely criticized by most Republicans as being a “farce” that they said was effectively nothing more than “legalizing illegal immigration.”
Biden did not mention Taiwan in his remarks and did not address the TikTok bill.
FBI Director Christopher Wray addressed the threat TikTok poses to the U.S. during an NBC News interview this week. He explained the FBI’s top concerns about the app.
“TikTok, for us, represents a national security concern,” Wray responded. “And the reason I say that is that TikTok’s parent company is beholden to the Chinese government. So that for us manifests itself in three specific ways: it has to do with the data, it has to do with the recommendation algorithm, it has to deal with the software. The data, that we’re talking about the ability to control or collect data on millions and millions of users and to use it for all sorts of influence operations, like driving their AI efforts, which are not remotely constrained by the rule of law.”
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Wray said that the Chinese were “currently attempting to steal our AI and hack American technology every day.”
When asked what he would say to the average American who uses TikTok and dismisses the threat that it poses, he said: “My message is you need to take into account who the Chinese government is, who the Chinese Communist Party is, even if for some reason, you don’t care about that, which I would argue you should. What about all of your friends, family members, classmates, co-workers, neighbors, etc, who are also participating and are connected to you through all those same things? Maybe they would care about the ability of the Chinese government and the Chinese intelligence services to access all that.”