TikTok owner ByteDance has secured a potential workaround for President Trump’s plan to ban or force a sale of the popular social media app in the United States by establishing its global headquarters in the United Kingdom, a decision already approved by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The move tails a monthslong effort by the White House to stop Huawei, China’s flagship telecommunications company, from supplying equipment to the U.K.’s 5G network. Both companies pose a national security risk, U.S. officials say.
The decision is a “commercial one,” a spokesperson for Johnson said this week. Johnson had not discussed the matter with Trump, he said. An announcement is expected this week.
Such a move “poses a clear and present danger to our national security,” said Curtis Ellis, policy director at America First Policies and an adviser to the Trump 2016 campaign.
“TikTok is a data collection service masquerading as a social media app,” Ellis said. “It collects and controls huge troves of user information from passwords to IP addresses. It identifies every computer on your home network, your Wi-Fi system, and ID access point. It enables the remote download of files onto your device.”
The company “makes it nearly impossible to disable the data collection aspects of the app,” said Ellis, calling this “troubling.”
On Monday, Trump announced a 45-day ultimatum for ByteDance to divest or face a ban in the U.S. Trump also called for the U.S. Treasury to receive a portion of the deal payment, which he likened to “key money,” typically a payment from a tenant to a landlord to acquire a property lease.
ByteDance, in a statement, said Trump’s decision had forced the company to reconsider the location of TikTok’s headquarters, planned initially for California or New York. TikTok published multiple openings for federal affairs roles based in Washington, D.C., this week.
“In light of the current situation, ByteDance has been evaluating the possibility of establishing TikTok’s headquarters outside of the U.S., to better serve our global users,” the company said in a statement. ByteDance did not return a request for additional comment.
Where the White House stands on TikTok growing its U.K. footprint is unclear. Britain is an important security partner for the U.S., and TikTok, like Huawei, has denied cooperating with Chinese intelligence.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has compared TikTok to Huawei and ZTE, Chinese companies officially designated by the Federal Communications Commission as threats to national security, and on Wednesday, Pompeo broadened the administration’s attack on TikTok to include other Chinese-owned messaging platforms.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment, and it declined to comment on the record for this story.
Microsoft has confirmed its interest in acquiring TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all U.S. security partners under the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement, and has stressed its commitment to transparency and security.
It would undergo “a complete security review,” granting oversight to the relevant governments, Microsoft said. The U.K. is not part of the deal.
But the company’s sale to an American business is not without risk, officials and lawmakers agree.
In television interviews this week, White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro questioned whether it was “prudent” to allow TikTok’s sale “to a company that has operations in China that might compromise it,” referring to Microsoft, a company with Chinese operations, suggesting “Microsoft divest their Chinese holdings.”
In a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, requested clarification on the terms of the potential ownership bid.
Hawley and Ellis say that TikTok’s threat to U.S. national security will persist so long as it remains a Chinese company.
“No matter where it’s physical headquarters are established, as long as it is owned and controlled by the Chinese government, or by a Chinese company which answers to the Chinese Communist Party, it poses a clear and present danger to our national security,” said Ellis.
“TikTok can buy office space in London and call that their headquarters if they want to, the only question that matters is whether they cut all ties to the CCP and its proxies,” Hawley said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Until that happens, everything else is just theater.”
