WASHINGTON – A US plan to force the sale of TikTok’s US operations to a group including Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc. has been suspended indefinitely, say people familiar with the situation, while President Biden is broadly reviewing his predecessor’s efforts to exploit potential security risks posed by Chinese technology companies.
The TikTok deal – which was spearheaded by then-President Donald Trump – has languished since last fall amid successful legal challenges against the US government’s efforts by TikTok’s owner, China’s ByteDance Ltd.
Talks have continued between ByteDance representatives and US national security officials, the people said. Those discussions focused on data security and ways to prevent the information TikTok collects about US users from being accessed by the Chinese government, they said.
But no imminent decision is expected on how to resolve the issues surrounding TikTok, as the Biden administration is determining its own response to the potential security risk posed by data collection by Chinese tech companies.
“We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to securing US data that will address all the threats we face,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne. “This includes the risk of Chinese apps and other software operating in the US. In the coming months, we expect to assess specific cases in light of a comprehensive understanding of the risks we face.”