One of the defining technology decisions of the Trump administration was its August 2020 “ban” on TikTok—an executive order to which legal challenges are still playing out in the courts. The incoming Biden-Harris administration, however, has indicated its intention to pivot away from Trump’s approach on several key technology policies, from the expected appointment of a national cyber director to the reinvigoration of U.S. diplomacy to build tech coalitions abroad. President Biden will need to make policy decisions about software made by companies incorporated in foreign countries, and to what extent that might pose national security risks. There may be a future “TikTok policy,” in other words, that isn’t at all about—or at least isn’t just about—TikTok.
In April 2020, Republican Rep. Jim Banks introduced legislation in the House of the Representatives that sought to require developers of foreign software to provide warnings before consumers downloaded the products in question. It’s highly likely that similar such proposals will enter Congress in the next few years. On the executive branch side, the Biden administration has many decisions ahead on mobile…
