The reason the Trump Administration hasn’t made a big TikTok announcement is that they are trying to have it both ways–American billionaires make money but the Chinese retain control over the underlying technology, two experts argue in the New York Times guest essay seen below. They note that powerful American investors have invested in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent Chinese company. Larry Ellison’s Oracle would make money by creating the appearance that TikTok is becoming an American company under its sway. Apple and Google distribute TikTok through their app stores.
But it is a deception. “Under the proposed arrangement,” as the authors write, “Beijing would still retain leverage over a platform that shapes what millions of Americans see every day–influence that China would never allow the United States to wield over its own digital ecosystem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/opinion/tiktok-deal-national-security.html?searchResultPosition=1
