There is cause for concern about WeChat. Never before has the primary information source and communications medium of a vital group of American citizens—Chinese-born Americans and up to 19 million daily users with connections to China—been mined, monitored, and censored by a rival power on U.S. soil. Government studies, hearings, and a national debate on balancing cybersecurity and First Amendment freedoms are in order. 

Instead, the administration is threatening to ban WeChat under the Emergency Powers Act. It was passed in 1976 to address emergencies, which are rare, not reasonable suspicions, which are constant. The Act is becoming a bludgeon similar to the Chinese Communist Party’s Picking Troubles and Provoking Trouble statute, which Beijing invokes to silence China’s critics  without due process. 

The threat from WeChat is creeping and corrosive, not imminent. Perhaps it should be banned in the United States, but only after a thorough, open, evidence-based investigation.  Such a ban would be convincing to Americans who’ve come to rely on WeChat and would be viewed as credible, rather than capricious, by allies who share Washington’s concern about the impact of China’s uber-app on their own people.