The Biden administration has reportedly reached a preliminary agreement with TikTok to address U.S. fears that the app could compromise national security through connections to the Chinese government.
The social media platform has worked out the details of a deal with the White House to change its data security practices and governance without requiring its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok, according to the New York Times. The two parties are still working out the specifics, with the Justice Department and Treasury Department taking the lead in the negotiations.
The deal includes three key changes. First, American data will be stored in servers operated by the company Oracle. Second, the company will monitor TikTok’s algorithms to ensure that the Chinese government will not modify them. And third, the company will create a board of security experts to oversee the operations of the servers.
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Still, some negotiators, including Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and some Treasury Department officials, fear that the measures discussed so far would not fully address the national security threats posed by TikTok, according to the report, meaning that the deal is not yet secured.
It is unclear when the finalized deal will be reached, although some of the people involved claim it will occur in the next few months.
Lawmakers and regulators have heavily scrutinized TikTok over its relationship with China. The app is owned and operated by ByteDance, which has connections to the Chinese Communist Party. While TikTok’s executives have repeatedly stated that the company has never provided user data to the CCP, some fear that Chinese authorities could access user data by implementing select national security laws.
The Trump administration pushed ByteDance to sell TikTok in 2020, only for the deal to fall through. The Biden administration has continued to pressure the company into improving its handling of data from users in the United States. The company announced in May that it was partnering with Oracle, a web-hosting service, to keep all U.S. user data stored within the U.S. The company has also been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to resolve security concerns.
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These details gained attention after a Buzzfeed News report confirmed that Chinese employees could access U.S.-based user data.
Evidence has continued to pile up that ByteDance has close ties to the Chinese government. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew leads the company but reportedly has less influence than ByteDance’s founder over product design. The company helped promote pro-China content in a news aggregator that it owned in the late 2010s, according to former employees. A review of LinkedIn also found that several ByteDance employees had a history of working in Chinese state media.
