Report from the New York Times
In Brief – The US and Chinese officials have said that they have the “framework for a deal” on TikTok as part of broader bilateral and foreign policy talks that could see President Trump certifying that the divestiture conditions set in federal TikTok legislation are met. TikTok’s feed of short videos has been increasing in cultural impact for almost a decade, leading to accusations that it posed a national security risk because the Chinese Government could manipulate parent company ByteDance to access sensitive data on American TikTok users, or manipulate the TikTok content algorithm to advance its policy goals. The outline of the deal is reportedly to create a separate corporation for TikTok’s US operations and add new US investors to reduce the ownership stake of China-based ByteDance to less than 20 percent. The bipartisan legislation forcing the sale of TikTok to an owner not based in China granted the President authority to delay enforcement of the law during negotiations and certify that the law’s conditions were met. President Trump, who attempted to shut down TikTok in 2020 but grew to support the platform, delayed enforcement several times and reportedly will soon certify the conditions have been met.
Context – Stretching back to President Trump’s initial 2020 effort to ban TikTok, there were two main national security arguments. The Chinese Government had the power to manipulate the TikTok algorithms to influence US public opinion, and they could access US user data that could be used for intelligence purposes. Over years of negotiations between ByteDance and US security agencies, leaks from inside TikTok exposed interference from Chinese executives and raised questions about any plans to secure the algorithms or the data. US intelligence services briefed the Congress in the run up to key votes and briefed the courts as well. Access to US user data may be easier to deal with as it can be held in US-based servers without giving access to China-based officials, but the content algorithms, often complex and non-transparent, are a harder nut to crack. It appears that the algorithms will still be developed in China and licensed to the US business.