China Still Has Easy Access To TikTok Despite Trump ‘Fixes’

Remember how the Trump administration — and folks like Brendan Carr — spent four straight years fear-mongering about China’s purported control over TikTok and its owner, ByteDance? And remember how the Trump administration (with incompetent Democratic lawmaker help) “fixed” the problem by offloading Tiktok to Trump’s billionaire buddies while still maintaining co-ownership with the Chinese?

It was basically a five-year xenophobic fear campaign designed to steal the revenues of a top short-form video company that U.S. giants like Meta were struggling to compete with. And it was propped up by endless empty lip service to propaganda, consumer privacy, and national security; in turn propped up by a tech press that struggled to explain how silly and corruption-fueled it all was.

After the Trump deal, U.S. operations of TikTok now had three “managing investors” that collectively owned 45 percent of the company: Oracle Corporation (Larry Ellison), Silver Lake, and MGX. Another 5 percent is owned by other new investors, 30.1 percent is “held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 20 percent was retained by ByteDance.

The Trump administration offloaded most of TikTok’s infrastructure to Oracle — a company with a long list of privacy violations — so they could pretend they “fixed privacy issues” with the app. They also set up a bunch of “safeguards” designed to pretend they’d cut off Chinese influence, without actually doing so.

Unsurprisingly, a deep dive by Politico found that little has actually changed in terms of Chinese access to some of the core components of the app and user data. And there’s little to no indication the Trump administration is doing anything to ensure adherence to the deal. Employees are still using AI and internal chat systems built by ByteDance, which would likely make Chinese data collection trivial:

“Employees at the new company, officially named TikTok USDS Joint Venture, still work regularly with the global TikTok organization, according to current and former employees, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, and internal communications reviewed by POLITICO Magazine. That includes coordinating over new features, sharing information about dangerous trends on the app and collaborating over policies. U.S. employees also still use an internal chat system called Lark, which was built by TikTok’s former Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to communicate and share information with both their U.S. and global counterparts.”

Great stuff. There are other instances of largely performative attempts to keep Chinese and U.S. TikTok employees separated, but there’s no real indication this is working or being overseen by anybody competent in the U.S. government:

“At TikTok office buildings, U.S. employees can go to TikTok global offices on different floors but are required to get a chaperone, an employee said, and are prohibited from bringing laptops. Prior to the deal, U.S. employees could mostly move freely between the U.S. and global offices.”

It’s equally murky as to whether “the algorithm” (a subject of endless debate during the fearmongering campaign) is still maintained and updated by ByteDance engineers.

Again, there’s no real indication that this was ever about anything but Trump and his allies hijacking the revenues of a profitable short-form video company under the pretense of national security. You could also easily argue that under Byetance ownership the company was at least incentivized to behave to remain in the U.S.; guys like Larry Ellison — with a long history of ethical and privacy “lapses” — really has no worries that the government will ever hold him accountable for much of anything.

As we noted early on, the Chinese really don’t need TikTok to spy on Americans or funnel propaganda to the electorate. Because we’re too corrupt to regulate data brokers or pass a privacy law, most U.S. consumer data is openly accessible via the public market to anybody — including Chinese intelligence.

The Trump administration is still facing a lawsuit alleging the deal is illegal. And Democrats continue to look positively feckless and ignorant for helping the Trump administration hijack an app (popular with young voters) during a presidential election season where the youth vote mattered more than ever.