What sensitive TikTok data is the US afraid will fall into the hands of the Chinese government that is causing a potential threat to national security?
Last Updated: 21.06.2025 03:16
How Trump handles the issue will be an important test. Maybe he can work some sort of compromise and look like a folk hero doing it, but I will be very surprised if he is able to force Beijing’s hand on this one.
But I don’t think that fears of China exploiting foreign user data are really the crux of the matter.
If ByteDance (which is to say, China) were to divest itself of Tiktok, the sophisticated, lucrative TikTok/Douyin algorithm(s), app code, tags, etc., would be divested with it.
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None in particular. I’m not trying to be glib or obtuse, but I really can’t imagine what use Xi Jinping and his buddies could possibly have with my scrolling history and metadata or whatever.
The crux of the matter is the same old restriction of Western access to resources and markets which has always given the capitalists an urge to label the communists as the fount of all evil.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance — the structure is a bit byzantine — is Beijing-based. As such, it is required by Chinese law to include a CCP committee in its governance, meaning a board of employees who are Party members. It is also compelled, as all companies in China are, to pledge cooperation or assistance in any intelligence-gathering activities that might be demanded by the state. So, in theory, the CCP could order ByteDance to fork over data.
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I do get that this is concerning on some level. Though, if anyone cares to think back to circa 2001, I can recall several controversial U.S. government policies which similarly threatened to basically militarize telecommunications in this country, so it’s not as if this is something unprecedentedly sinister and uniquely Red-Chinese.
But the West would very much like to purchase and control and deconstruct and promulgate it. Somebody over here wants that tech for themselves. My sense is that this is the main reason for the cries of ‘national security,’ far more than any anxieties of a practical nature. It would not be the first time that business had leveraged ‘national security’ for capital gain.
China does not want that little piggy to go to market, much as the Pentagon is not eager to post nuclear submarine schematics for sale on Facebook Marketplace. They would rather shutter than sell.