Although acknowledging that the TikTok app “offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression,” etc., wonderful app in so many ways, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously deferred in its ruling to the fact that “Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary” (“US Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban law,” BBC, January 17, 2024).
The BBC:
TikTok had challenged the law, arguing it would violate free speech protections for the more than 170 million users it says it has in the US.
But that argument was rejected unanimously by the nation’s highest court, meaning TikTok must now find an approved buyer for the US version of the app or face removal from app stores and web hosting services.
The Supreme Court:
Rather than meaningfully dispute the scope of the data TikTok collects or the ends to which it may be used, petitioners contest probability, asserting that it is “unlikely” that China would “compel TikTok to turn over user data for intelligence-gathering purposes, since China has more effective and efficient means of obtaining relevant information.”….
Even if China has not yet leveraged its relationship with ByteDance Ltd. to access U. S. TikTok users’ data, petitioners offer no basis for concluding that the Government’s determination that China might do so is not at least a “reasonable inferenc[e] based on substantial evidence.”
ByteDance must sell TikTok to an acceptable buyer by January 19 or be banned in the United States. ByteDance has said it won’t sell. But whether the Beijing-based firm sells TikTok and access to its CCP-compliant code is not up to ByteDance. It’s up to its boss, the Chinese Communist Party.
Will the CCP sell TikTok to Elon Musk?
The app will probably be banned in the United States despite a recent report that “Chinese officials, facing a looming U.S. TikTok ban, have internally discussed options including the possibility of allowing a trusted non-Chinese party such as Elon Musk to invest in or take control of TikTok’s U.S. operations, people familiar with the discussions said” (“China Officials Discuss Option of TikTok Sale to Elon Musk,” The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2025).
Which, if true, raises the question of what it is the Chinese officials expect a “trusted non-Chinese party such as Elon Musk” to do with the app that would make entrusting him with it the least unpalatable alternative. Decline to expose exactly how the app algorithmically promotes the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party? Allow the app to keep doing so?
Is Musk that severely compromised by his Tesla business in China and his rationalizations about China to date? This is also the guy who bought Twitter and immediately revealed all the Twitter communications about how they were arbitrarily censoring people for their own motives and as demanded by the government.
And if the Chinese Communist Party can trust Musk to be the owner of TikTok, doesn’t this, from the U.S. perspective, exclude him from from the category of viable possible buyers of TikTok?
Also, Trump
Musk isn’t the only influential player on the U.S. national stage who is contradictory about China.
There’s also President-elect Donald Trump, who said in a January 17 Truth Social tweet that he had just spoken to Xi Jinping (“Chairman Xi Jinping of China”), and “the call was a very good one for both China and the U.S.A. It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately. We discussed balancing Trade, Fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects. President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe!”
What? Chairman, President, Dictator Xi Jinping “will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe!”? Has Trump collapsed into a puddle of naïveté (as he seems to do periodically, at least verbally), is he lying to provide cover or as some kind of dealmaking gambit, or what? The people he’s been picking for his national security and diplomacy team seem to have no illusions about Xi Jinping or the CCP.
