Allen Yu

Opinion | Trump, not TikTok or China, is real threat to US national security

When Americans are on edge over foreign governments spending money on social media to influence US elections, what should they think when their president solicits billions from a private firm to support his pet projects?

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

US President Donald Trump’s crusade against TikTok on national security grounds could have far-reaching effects on US-based internet firms if it sparks a global backlash. Photo: Reuters

Allen Yu

Published: 3:30am, 12 Oct 2020Updated: 2:54pm, 15 Oct 2020

US President Donald Trump was elected with a mandate to make deals and “drain the swamp”. His TikTok saga reveals just how much he has let down his country.

Trump’s demand for a fire sale of TikTok hit a legal wall two weeks ago when a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction. Judge Carl Nichols questioned whether the president had the legal authority to so broadly ban and restrict a “personal communication” and “informational” service such as TikTok on national security grounds.

Even without the injunction, Trump’s vaunted deal-making skills have morphed into a horror show. From the beginning, Trump accused TikTok of being a platform for Chinese espionage. The CIA found no evidence of this, however, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation – which traditionally has been critical of China’s internet companies – concluded there was no evidence TikTok was less secure than other Chinese-owned technologies.

After months of negotiations, a surprise deal was announced in late September between ByteDance and Oracle in which ByteDance’s operations outside China would be transformed into a new global company headquartered in Texas. After initially giving his “blessings” to the deal, Trump backtracked days later to demand that the core algorithms and AI behind TikTok – designed, owned and controlled by ByteDance – must be sold and handed over, too.

The fact TikTok is getting all this attention over data security is unfathomable. TikTok is a video-sharing service for short, fun videos popular among teens, hardly a target for international spying. An email, chatting or cloud storage service would represent far juicier targets for Chinese agents.

01:46

Oracle reaches deal to become TikTok’s ‘technology partner’, after Microsoft offer is rejected

Furthermore, the United States currently does not have any central federal-level data privacy laws, let alone data security laws. Authorities generally leave it to the marketplace and competition to keep companies in check.