(Bloomberg) -- Peter Thiel likened US-China ties to a codependent marriage and lamented the rise of TikTok at a dinner for venture capitalists and lawmakers a day before the app’s chief executive testifies on Capitol Hill.

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Thiel compared the Chinese-owned app to homelessness — “a really obvious problem,” as he put it — in a brief speech to the guests. The event was hosted by the Hill & Valley Forum, a group backed by Thiel and Vinod Khosla’s venture capital firms that brings together power players from Washington and Silicon Valley.

The aim of the group — some of whom have a financial interest in TikTok’s competitors and emerging AI startups — was to press home the urgency of the China threat to lawmakers whose anti-Beijing rhetoric is already running high.

Milling around the cocktail hour, tech executives mingled with Washington’s policy elite, including House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, a frequent TikTok critic, was also on the guest list, among numerous other lawmakers, think-tank analysts and tech financiers.

AI startup founders chatted with lobbyists, asking, “Are you from the Hill or the Valley?” One group of guests advocated for a kind of national guard of technology, ready to address any threat, be it a global pandemic or a cyber-attack from China.

Read more: TikTok CEO Chew Set to Enter a Washington Fight He Can’t Win

From cocktails, they went to dinner, where the main course was a choice between seared chicken with kaffir lime or seared branzino with champagne and yuzu sauce. Dessert was a lemon meringue mousse tower.

While the organizers said the dinner timing was coincidental, it took place less than a day before TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he’s set to face hostile questioning from lawmakers who see the app as a grave threat to US national security. Critics point to the risk that Beijing can gain access to data hoovered up by the app, which is owned by ByteDance Ltd., one of China’s largest internet companies.