Microsoft will continue to explore a purchase of Chinese-owned TikTok amid concerns about the popular video-sharing social network’s possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the company announced Sunday after CEO Satya Nadella spoke with President Trump.
“Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s concerns,” Microsoft said in a blog post two days after Trump told reporters on Air Force One he planned to ban TikTok in the United States.
“It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury,” the statement added. “Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President.”
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been alerted that Microsoft is exploring a possible purchase of TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, Microsoft said.
The plan, according to Microsoft, is to add “world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections” and the operating model for the service “would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversight by governments in these countries.”
“Among other measures, Microsoft would ensure that all private data of TikTok’s American users is transferred to and remains in the United States. To the extent that any such data is currently stored or backed-up outside the United States, Microsoft would ensure that this data is deleted from servers outside the country after it is transferred,” Microsoft said.
Earlier on Sunday, both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin signaled Trump was close to taking action against TikTok. The duo warned about the threat posed by the video-sharing social network app.
Mnuchin, who is chairman of CFIUS, which opened a national security review into TikTok in late 2019, shed new light on that investigation in an interview with ABC News.
“I will say publicly that the entire committee agrees that TikTok cannot stay in the current format, because it risks sending back information on a hundred million Americans,” Mnuchin said. He said that “the president can either force a sale, or he can block the app” using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
ByteDance and TikTok have repeatedly claimed that they have not and would never turn over TikTok user data to the Chinese government, but national security officials have raised concerns about China’s own 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires all Chinese companies to assist Chinese intelligence services when asked — and to keep it secret.
Pompeo told Fox News that Trump was concerned about the risk posed by Chinese software inside the U.S., “and so he will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Here’s what I hope the American people will come to recognize. These Chinese software companies doing business in the United States, whether it’s TikTok or We Chat, there are countless more … are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus,” Pompeo said.
