Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, who led the charge on a bill that could effectively ban TikTok in the country — on the grounds that China can “surveill its users” — plans to take a position at the US surveillance firm and defense contractor Palantir. Forbes mentionted.
Earlier Friday, Wisconsin Rep was announced that he will resign from Congress next month and that his last day will be April 19. His departure further shrinks Republicans' slim majority and leaves their party with a 217-213 majority in the House. Forbes wrote that Gallagher's title at the company is still unknown.
Gallagher, who currently chairs the Chinese Communist Party's Select Committee, was the lead sponsor of the bill that would have forced TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the popular social media platform within six months or face a possible ban from app stores and web hosting services.
On March 13, the House voted in favor of the bill, sending it to the Democratic-led Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.
After the vote, Palantir executive Jacob Helberg, who also serves on the US-China Economic and Security Council, called to his social media followers to fund opponents of lawmakers who voted no on the bill to ban TikTok. Gallagher has worked with Helberg for the past few months as part of it a building effort bipartisan, bipartisan support for the bill. Helberg took a job at Palantir as a senior policy adviser to CEO Alex Karp in August.
Gallagher justified the legislation at a press conference by calling TikTok “a threat to US national security.”
“Under ByteDance's ownership structure,” he said he said“the Chinese government has the ability to manipulate TikTok's algorithm, surveil its users, and conduct lobbying operations that quietly populate Americans' For You pages.”
Gallagher insisted the bill was not about censorship. “The text expressly forbids it. And it cannot, cannot be used to censor speech. He takes absolutely no position on the content of the speech,” Gallagher said, according to WPR. “Only foreign adversaries control, foreign adversaries control what is becoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-gallagher-tiktok-ban-palantir-1234993167/