albeit subject to proposed safeguards relating to cloud infrastructure and other data security concerns. Project Texas would also have allowed ByteDance to continue to have a role in certain aspects of TikTok’s United States operations. (C) Project Texas would have allowed TikTok to continue to rely on the engineers and back-end support in China to update its algorithms and the source code needed to run the TikTok application in the United States. (D) Allowing code development in and access to United States user data from China potentially exposes United States users to malicious code, backdoor vulnerabilities, surreptitious surveillance, and other problematic activities tied to source code development. (E) Allowing back-end support, code development, and operational activities to remain in China would also require TikTok to continue to send United States user data to China to update the machine learning algorithms and source code for the application, and to conduct related back-end services, like managing users’ accounts. (7) On January 31, 2024, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, testified before the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party of the House of Representatives that TikTok gives the PRC the ability to control data collection on millions of users, which can be used for all sorts of intelligence operations or influence operations, and the ability, should they so choose, to control the software on millions of devices, which means the opportunity to technically compromise millions of devices . (8) The risks posed by TikTok’s data collection would be addressed by the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, despite the potential that the PRC might purchase similar types of data from private data brokers. (9) The degree of risk posed by TikTok has increased alongside the application’s immense popularity in the United States.