Technology company Oracle will provide security for the new TikTok entity in the United States, following the President Trump-backed deal to allow the social media company to keep operating in the U.S.
The proposal will “allow Oracle, as the security provider for this new entity, to inspect it, to study how it behaves and see how it operates,” a senior White House official said.
The U.S. TikTok investment group includes Oracle and private equity firm Silver Lake, among other firms, the official said, adding that the full number of investors will be finalized before the end of the transaction. The official expects TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will hold less than 20 percent of the equity in the U.S. operations, which complies with the Biden-era divest-or-ban law.
As part of the proposal, the algorithm of TikTok will be “retrained” and brought under the control of the U.S. joint venture, a result of what the official said was “a tough point of negotiation.”
Per the deal, “a copy of the content recommendation algorithm … [is] going to be fully inspected and retrained by the security provider on U.S. user data and then it’s going to be operated by that U.S. entity. It’s going to be continuously monitored as it operates to ensure that it’s behaving appropriately — that it’s not being used for any kind of malicious purpose and that it’s not being unduly influenced,” the official said.
Trump said Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping approved the deal that would allow TikTok to remain operating in the U.S. At the time, the Chinese government raised questions about how far along negotiations actually were in its description of the Trump-Xi call.
When asked if China has agreed to all terms of the deal, the official said, “we feel confident that China has approved the deal and that all the necessary regulatory hurdles that go along with final approval of the deal will move forward.”
The official added that there are no plans for additional talks with the Chinese delegation.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week declaring that the terms of the deal meets U.S. national security needs. He will also extend the enforcement pause by an additional 20 days to allow the investors and TikTok to work through implementation documents.
Trump had pushed back enforcement of the divest-or-ban law until Dec. 16 last week.
