It’s been one hell of a week for TikTok. The company is scrambling to get the White House to approve a deal it struck with Oracle, designed to alleviate national security concerns the US government raised about TikTok’s Chinese ownership. While the company waits to see whether President Trump will accept the arrangement, the clock continues to run out on his deadline for a sale. Regardless of what happens to TikTok, one thing is already clear: Concerns about Chinese technology aren’t going away, and the United States is no more prepared to confront them now than it was when the saga over TikTok began.
The US Commerce Department announced Friday morning that TikTok, as well as WeChat, will be blocked from US mobile app stores starting Sunday, following two executive orders Trump signed in August. The orders compelled TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to find an American buyer for the app by September 20, a deadline that was later extended to November 12. The US government says that TikTok’s data collection practices, combined with Chinese laws that require companies to cooperate with state intelligence services, are “creating unacceptable risks to our national security.”
In a statement, TikTok said it disagreed with the Commerce Department’s decision. “In our proposal to the US administration, we've already committed to unprecedented levels of additional transparency and accountability well beyond what other apps are willing to do, including third-party audits, verification of code security, and US government oversight of US data security,” the company wrote. “Furt ..
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