The move escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over the control of technologies that could affect national security, free speech and the social media industry.
I will get beat up for this question but here goes. They are using the word "could". Does this mean there is no evidence of TikTok exfiltrating sensitive intelligence data to the CCP? The reason I ask is that if this were actually taking place there would be no need to vote on breaking up TikTok or even mention the US constitution. Such actions would immediately be an act of war or at very least trigger sanctions. So is the real purpose of this to mitigate war or to confine US communications to platforms that the US already has intercept and social manipulation capabilities on or something else beyond the reasons given in the article?