President Donald Trump signed an executive order today allowing for a new U.S.-based joint venture to control communist Chinese government-tied app TikTok.
Experts and politicians have long highlighted the national security threats of TikTok given its Chinese parent company ByteDance’s access to data and algorithms. The app has also been found to enforce biased censorship. Trump’s executive order, “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security,” released today, addresses those concerns.
The executive order explains that the new joint venture will leave less than 20 percent ownership to ByteDance, the company in which the communist Chinese government owns a financial stake and has a board seat. Trump has not yet named the American companies that will be part of the venture. He did previously hint that Dell Technologies and media mogul Rupert Murdoch could be involved.
It also addresses concerns about the platform algorithm and potential data storage issues. “[T]he divestiture puts the operation of the algorithms and code, as well as content-moderation decisions, under the control of the new joint venture.” The order adds, “the divestiture prohibits the storage of sensitive United States user data in a manner that would place such data under the control of a foreign adversary.”
Furthermore, Trump’s order states, “the divestiture includes intense monitoring of software updates, algorithms, and data flows by the United States’ trusted security partners.”
In 2023, Fox News China expert Gordon Chang, former member of the Defense Intelligence Community Scott Kieff, and former Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland told MRC that TikTok was a serious national security threat. Chang stated, “The 2017 national intelligence law of China articles 7 and 14 require every Chinese entity to spy if demanded.” McFarland described it as “letting the Chinese Communist Party into every aspect of your life.”
Not only that, but MRC also logged over 300 cases of TikTok censorship on its unique CensorTrack database. For instance, in October 2023, TikTok boasted that it had removed over 500,000 pieces of content from the platform related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. In March 2024, TikTok censored The Daily Wire commentator Brett Cooper, who hosts The Comments Section. The platform also censored influencer Nicole Bendayan for highlighting the potential harms of oral contraceptives, as Cooper did.
