The U.S. is putting TikTok in an impossible position

Frustratingly, the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. made the demand behind closed doors. CFIUS has been investigating TikTok’s national security implications for years, and its failure to reach a conclusion has led to lawmakers trying to ban the ByteDance-owned app through legislative means. But whether out in the open or not, something is finally happening.

TikTok’s defense rests on Project Texas, its $1.5 billion program for getting on the right side of the American authorities—the European version is called Project Clover. Both schemes are supposed to demonstrate that TikTok is protecting Western data and minds from China’s spies and propagandists. 

In the U.S., Oracle Cloud already hosts TikTok’s local data. The firm’s European data centers are also operated by third parties, but Project Texas has gone a step further by setting up a new subsidiary called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which TikTok proposes should be controlled by the U.S. government. The entity would control TikTok’s U.S. data access and content moderation, and its board would report to CFIUS.

Here’s TikTok spokeswoman Maureen Shanahan, responding to the new CFIUS reports: “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

I’ve written before that this whole debate is riddled with hypocrisy, because U.S. intelligence can apply just as much pressure to Meta and Twitter as the Chinese Communist Party can apply to TikTok—as if to drive that point home, Austria’s data protection authority just ruled that European websites can’t legally use Facebook’s tracking technology because the resulting data would be susceptible to mass surveillance by U.S. intelligence. But even so, it’s reasonable for the U.S. to want to protect its citizens’ data from foreign spies.

If CFIUS is demanding an ownership change, Project Texas has clearly left it unimpressed. However, the opacity of this process makes it difficult to see what the problem is. On the face of it, those controls should stop TikTok from putting Americans at risk, even if ordered by the Chinese government to hand over their data or influence their opinions. Maybe CFIUS knows something about how the controls could be bypassed, but without a clearer picture of the outstanding issues, it’s just as reasonable to read this as the U.S. trying to protect Facebook and friends from their first serious overseas rival—which happens to come from the U.S.’s primary geopolitical rival.

Even if ByteDance were to agree to a sale, Beijing would need to agree—and it would be unlikely to let TikTok’s algorithm be part of the deal. There are many valid reasons to criticize TikTok, but in this instance, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for a company that’s stuck in an impossible position.

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David Meyer

Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman. 

NEWSWORTHY

Microsoft's A.I. Copilot. Microsoft is bringing generative A.I. to its Microsoft 365 suite which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more with a feature called Copilot. The company made the announcement during its A.I. for work event Thursday, noting that it will sometimes be wrong and produce inaccuracies. It's unclear when the features will debut or what the pricing will be. But it is currently testing Copilot with 20 unnamed customers, eight of which are in the Fortune 500. 

Baidu’s Ernie bot disappoints. At a launch event in Beijing, Baidu’s bot named a company and gave it a slogan, wrote a 600-word business newsletter, explained economic theory, and wrote a poem based on a Chinese idiom. It did not go well. Baidu CEO Robin Li’s presentation was prerecorded and investors had apparently anticipated a live demo. “It is not perfect yet, so why do we need to launch it today?” Li asked. “Because the market demands it." About $3 billion was wiped off of the company’s market capitalization when shares fell after the unveiling.

Snapchat’s parental controls. The social media app has rolled out content filtering capabilities to prevent minors from being exposed to inappropriate content. To access the controls, parents and guardians can use the family center supervision tool to block sensitive or suggestive content from showing up on both stories and Snapchat’s Spotlight feed. In a release, Team Snap said it’s also working on adding additional tools to the Family Center that would give parents more visibility and control around teens’ use of My AI, the company’s experimental chatbot.

ON OUR FEED

“This painting is a love letter to the efforts of this incredible research team and to the amazing artist community. This transformational tech takes the first of many steps, to help us reclaim our agency on the web, by making our work not so easily exploited.” 

—Artist Karla Ortiz unveiling Musa Victoriosa, the first painting to use Glaze. Released Wednesday, the tool protects digital images from being used as training fodder for A.I. art models that mimic artistic style.

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BEFORE YOU GO

RIP Google Glass. Ten years after Google unveiled its first augmented reality headset, Google Glass, the product has reached the end of its life. Tech blog 9to5Google reports that Google has stopped selling the $1,000 Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 and will stop supporting the device in September. It's been a rocky journey for Google Glass. After the initial consumer version was widely mocked by many for its geeky look and because of fears that "Glassholes"—as early users of the device were called—could secretly film people, Google killed the consumer version and sold the device as a hands-free tool for workers in medical, agricultural, and factory settings. Ironically, Glass' demise comes as wearable computer glasses could be on the threshold of a breakout moment, with an Apple mixed reality headset reportedly set to go on sale this year.