For months, President Trump has imposed a kind of ban on TikTok, making the specifications vague and details thin – so when the official executive order came down last week, no one knew exactly what to think. The order calls for a full halt to all U.S. transactions with parent company TikTok by Sept. 20, a strong response to concerns about national security that are still abstract. Many observers have sidestepped the alarming implications of the order, treating it as a tactical threat to speed along with talks with Microsoft. But if the TikTok ban is a negotiation tactic, it’s an incredibly dangerous one.
The acquisition of Microsoft could have failed in half a dozen different ways. (As recently as last week, companies still did not agree on how many countries would be treated.) If the deal falls apart, banks will be forced to cut ties with TikTok as soon as the September 20 deadline arrives, devastated on company daily operations. The damage would not be total or immediate, but it’s hard to imagine TikTok’s American company surviving the chaos.
Make no mistake: something ugly and unusual is happening here. A social network used by millions of people is set to be banned by presidential fiat, with no public evidence of wrongdoing and only the thin gesture at constitutional restrictions on executive power. The fact that this action seems to be legal makes it uglier. If Trump follows his threat, the result would be a disastrous advance for American software and an alarming milestone in the descent of the United States into coercion and corruption.
It’s quite alarming because we have no clear indication as to why it’s happening. TikTok has been the subject of a national security review conducted under the auspices of the United States Foreign Investment Committee (CFIUS) for about a year now. But this executive order is far beyond the usual CFIUS process, and there is simply no evidence that the review found anything out of the ordinary. The executive order lists a range of general concerns such as data collection or the possibility of disinformation, but there is nothing that does not apply to dozens of other apps. The White House has not presented any evidence that incorrect data collection by TikTok shows as exceptional links between ByteDance and the Chinese government. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite: a recent CIA review got by The New York Times found no evidence that the app was used by Chinese spy agencies to discriminate data.
The US has forced Chinese interests out of US tech companies before – mostly after Chinese investors bought a stake in Grindr – but there has never been an emergency order like this. No president has ever referred to the existence of a program on American devices as a national emergency response or called emergency services against a piece of software. And while Microsoft sales seem to be offering TikTok a boost, the addition of a 45-day public time limit is bizarrely raging for a negotiation on this scale. These are unusual measures, and there has been no explanation as to why TikTok is specifically alarming enough to justify them.
The obvious president is the Huawei ban, which saw the Chinese hardware manufacturer disconnect not only from supplying U.S. networks, but from all transactions with U.S. companies around the world. But TikTok is different in several crucial respects. The concern with Huawei was network hardware: infrastructure-level devices that could not even be embedded in the network could be secured or controlled. Telephone networks are a long-standing point of national security interest, and the government has long played an active role in the system as a result. But none of that applies to consumer apps on consumer phones.
At the same time, Trump has given us plenty of reason to worry about corrupt motives for the recent shift. The most recent interest in TikTok stepped in to the half heart of the president in Tulsa in July, in which some of the meager turnout was blamed (freely or not) on an anti-Trump troll campaign that erupted on TikTok. Aside from that particular incident, it is unusual to start such a three-step conflict just three months before an election, suggesting that the president could use this as a political ploy, and the drama escalates to maximum effect. After the disastrous trade war, the continuation of TikTok may be Trump’s only chance for a political win against China.
There’s a host of other confusing issues in the mix. Trump has explicitly demanded that money be allocated to the U.S. treasury if the Microsoft deal goes through, and treat national security forces as a sort of protection racket for U.S. corporate interests. In a bizarre battle of luck, Facebook launches its TikTok competitor (as, less charitable, clone) within Instagram at the same time that the future of the rival social network is called into question. None of these are smoking guns, but they are the kinds of worries that are normally overcome by transparency and adherence to established processes. With Trump, we have none of that, which makes them much harder to shake off. As is often the case with national security movements, we are asked to trust the president’s judgment – but now we do not have clear reasons.
There are still real concerns about the Chinese government’s level of access to TikTok, and it would be foolish to ignore them. The Chinese government continues to pursue policies of censorship and surveillance, and recent arrests in Hong Kong have only underscored how brutal and repressive that system can be. (Trump has broad support for the arrests, he said in an interview this morning, “For years Hong Kong made money that we could have made.”)
But Trump’s ban is not the only possible response to that policy. There have been several measured proposals to limit the use of TikTok by federal employees as campaigners. When pressure arises, ByteDance could be forced to submit to a public inspection of its software and personnel, with further consequences if the inspection is prevented. If disinvestment is necessary, it could be approached methodically, such as a business deal instead of a demented game show.
But we have not taken the ridiculous path, which raises the uncomfortable question of how much Washington cares about TikTok anyway. I have no particular love for ByteDance or its subsidiaries, but the app has brought together a community that is respectively worthy. Destroying that community would be insulting and sad, like banning a book or destroying a movie. The nature of American politics means that most people who decide the fate of TikTok will not have much experience in using the app, but they should understand that something important is here. So far there is no sign that they see it as anything more than a hostage.
