Unless someone makes the right argument to the right person very soon, TikTok threatens to “go dark” in the United States from Sunday, January 19th.
[Editor’s Note: This article should be read in the context of an announcement from the U.S. Supreme Court, issued hours after this article was published, that TikTok’s appeal has been rejected unanimously and that a law, effectively banning the app’s use in the U.S. may be enforced.]
No one really believes it’s going to happen. So, each time the alarm clock goes off, many creators on TikTok’s now ubiquitous platform are falling back to sleep. It just might cost them dearly, one way or another.
Despite a lot of open discussion, bi-partisan political support (last year), an Act of Congress and the U.S. President signing the bill into law, a large number of its 170 million users inside the United States still don’t understand what the issue is, or even if there is one.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an Act of Congress signed into law by outgoing President Biden on April 24, 2024. The new law is intended to protect the national security interests of the United States and its citizens from foreign adversaries, particularly China, Russia and Iran. The new law specifically targets social media applications and platforms that are controlled by these foreign adversaries from continuing to develop and use technology to feed information, monitor behaviour and track locations of users inside the United States.
You might find this article informative.
TikTok in the Hot Seat After User Data Sent to China as US Ban Looms
Poor media literacy among US users of the nearly ubiquitous TikTok platform offers a wide range of dangers that the US Justice Department now says are being realised as sensitive data on user beliefs and interests is served up to China.
The law does not directly “ban” TikTok. What it does is prohibit any U.S. companies from supporting the distribution, maintenance or updating of the TikTok app. In particular, TikTok can no longer be made available for download over services such as Apple or Google app stores. Arguable, the law could also bar U.S. based creators from contributing content to the app that supports TikTok’s corporate or commercial operations.
The only solution offered under the law is for TikTok’s Chinese-controlled parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. corporate operations to another company not controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
TikTok immediately announced that it would use every legal tool to fight a forced sale of its U.S. assets. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deliberating on whether or not to uphold the law, or delay its implementation, based on challenges brought by TikTok on freedom of speech protections under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In court filings, TikTok lawyers concede that the law’s prohibitions would eventually make the app unusable, stating, “data centers would almost certainly conclude that they can no longer store [TikTok content, data or code]”.
One of TikTok’s lawyers, Noel Francisco, told the Court last week that, if the Supreme Court does not intervene, “We go dark. Essentially, the Platform shuts down.”
The National Security Dance
Neither TikTok, its controllers in China nor any U.S. politician has denied, or even refuted, the serious U.S. national security concerns raised by Chinese government access to the 170 million users of TikTok inside the United States.
Members of Congress in the United States have received detailed technical and intelligence briefings on the use of user data, once referred to as “metadata”, obtained by technology companies. The CEOs of the major technology companies, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook, have all testified on the national security implications of social media, AI and other technologies. Senior officials within the CIA, NSA and other members of the U.S. intelligence community, have as well.
The use of such data by intelligence organisations to influence, track and even harm adversaries is both very real and the underlying basis for the law that TikTok now faces. The content that attracts and produces user data for technology companies is equally as potent.
This article provides considerable background.
Is User Data Sold by Google Being Purchased by Killers?
Russian “AdTech” companies harvest American and European User Data obtained from Google for incredibly accurate information on who, and where, we are. The personal risks to internet users everywhere are deadly serious.
As former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker stated, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life, if you have enough metadata you don’t really need content.”
In fact, the only person to hold the office of both Director of the CIA and Director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden, affirmed Baker’s statement during a recorded debate at Johns Hopkins Foreign Affairs Symposium as, “absolutely correct.”
He then added, as intelligence operators, “We kill people based on metadata.”
That concern is at the heart of TikTok’s ban as a company directly controlled by the security and intelligence apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party.
One viral move that continues to spread through, if not on TikTok, is a direct connection between the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China and information being fed to hundreds of millions of TikTok users inside the U.S. That connection is not simply one way either. The government of the Peoples’ Republic of China has access to data, including locations, on TikTok’s U.S. users in real time.
This is, of course, because TikToK is a Chinese-controlled company. By Chinese law, that means TikTok is required to provide full access to all user data related to U.S. TikTok users to, and take orders from, the security and intelligence services of the Peoples Republic of China under the Chinese National Intelligence Law.
For the government of the United States, and its citizens, this is a very real problem.
Trumping It All
But reality is relative, after all, in the era of TikTok.
Not that long ago, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump agreed that TikTok posed a significant threat to the national security of the United States. He even signed an Executive Order in 2020 requiring TikTok to sever its Chinese ownership on National Security grounds. At nearly the same time, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill banning TikTok on government-issued devices.
Since then, politics have changed.
While the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that it will uphold the law, and is expected to announce its opinion imminently, there is no shortage of power brokers seeking strategic position in a variety of outcomes. The reasons are multiple, including both panning for popularity in a highly polarised U.S. society and, of course, money.
Regardless of concerns for the national security interests of the United States, and its citizens, politicians, in particular, have begun to offer comfort to TikTok. After all, TikTok generated nearly US$16 billion in revenue in 2023, a 67% increase year-on-year, helping to make the co-founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, the 3rd richest man in China with a net worth of US$45.6 billion.
As the TikTok “ban” gains popularity in the news media, politicians are upping their game.
Democratic Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass), Roy Wyden (D-Ore) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), together with Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17) this week introduced the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, offering an additional 270 days to resolve the issues. Republicans quickly squashed the bill, but not necessarily in opposition to a TikTok lifeline.
The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, coincidentally, extended a last-minute invitation to TikTok CEO, Shou Chew, to attend the inaugural ceremony on Monday in a “position of honor on the dais”, according to reporting from the New York Times.
Mr. Chew will be sitting very near the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, both leading contenders for a Trump-led initiative for TikTok to either sell to a U.S. company, or suffer watching U.S. companies eat its lunch.
The clock, if not alarm, is clearly ticking.
Thomas is our founder, acting Publisher and contributes an outsized proportion of our articles and editorial pieces.
He is an American lawyer & private equity specialist with 30+ years of international experience in investment strategy. He has lived and worked in London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Nicosia as both adviser and executive to several of the world’s largest family offices, institutional investors and State-investment companies. He is also founder of Coherent Media Group, a corporate holding company dedicated to media & entertainment businesses globally.
In his spare time, Thomas is a corporate and political speech-writer and has ghost-written numerous Op-Eds, political/espionage thrillers and science fiction novels.
This seems to have been lost in all the noise from President Trump.