In a matter of days, the United States is expected to ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued phones or tablets, marking the country’s broadest crackdown on the short-form video app to date.It’s gone from being just another proposal from a Republican lawmaker to being unanimously adopted in the Senate, backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and added to a massive year-end congressional spending package.Still, policymakers and security experts have said China’s national security laws make it a possibility — identifying a kernel of risk that fits into a broader anti-China narrative linked to issues including trade, human rights and authoritarianism.TikTok’s head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, has called the ban affecting government devices a “political approach that doesn’t have any real impact on national security.” “We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.One of those bills, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), would erect new barriers between tech platforms’ various lines of business, preventing Amazon, for example, from being able to compete with third-party sellers on its own marketplace."