While it seems slightly surprising to claim that a Chinese company has the full benefit of first amendment protections, it certainly feels like the government would be on far less controversial ground if it just passed some personal data protection laws. That would make it clear to everyone what the limits are on data collection via apps, what you can and can’t ship overseas, and it would be far easier to point to a specific foreign owned app and explain exactly why it can’t be permitted to operate that way.

Instead we get this sort of national-security justification, which can be applied arbitrarily and leaves everyone uncertain about what the limits actually are.