Trump, TikTok and Federal Devices

We’re referring to the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that waives a 2022 law banning TikTok on federal government devices. Congress enacted the ban amid concerns that Chinese Communist Party officials could use the app to spy on federal officials. Chinese law requires its companies and citizens to assist with national intelligence.

Yet DOJ claims the ban no longer applies because TikTok has been restructured. “Congress banned only the version of TikTok that shares the same problematic ownership features,” DOJ says. Well, no. The 2022 law banned “any successor application or service developed or provided” or owned by its Chinese parent ByteDance.

The supposedly new TikTok is still partly owned by and run on code developed by ByteDance. That means there’s still a risk that ByteDance, and thus the CCP, could surveil federal officials. Mr. Trump is compounding his blunder of letting TikTok continue operating in the U.S.

In 2024 sweeping majorities in Congress required TikTok to divest from ByteDance or face a nationwide ban. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump suspended enforcement of the law while his team worked out a deal to save the app. The ultimate deal the President blessed in January violates the 2024 law, which bars any “operational relationship” between TikTok and ByteDance and “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing.”

ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake—the largest of any investor—and continues to control the algorithm and source code. A TikTok press release also says that a global ByteDance-controlled TikTok entity “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”

That’s clearly an operational relationship, and it could give ByteDance access to heaps of U.S. user data, even if it is stored on U.S. servers managed by Oracle. National security officials had earlier rejected similar proposals by TikTok because they could still give ByteDance a means to manipulate TikTok’s code covertly and obtain data on American users.

DOJ legal filings in 2024 said “ByteDance represented to the Executive Branch in 2022 that the Source Code contained 2 billion lines of code,” compared to 10 million lines for Zoom and 50 million for Windows Operating System. “Even if static, Oracle estimated it would require three years to review this body of code.”

Because ByteDance regularly updates TikTok features and algorithms, it would be nearly impossible to catch manipulation in the code. The legal filing also said Chinese companies have been “partnering” with U.S. companies to obtain data on Americas. This is another reason TikTok’s joint venture doesn’t mitigate data security concerns.

Concerns about cyber back doors prompted the Federal Communications Commission in March to ban the import of foreign-made Wi-Fi routers. The FCC said “malicious actors” had exploited “security gaps” in these devices “to attack households, disrupt networks, enable espionage, and facilitate intellectual property theft.”

The Trump team recently also barred the sale of future electric cars by Polestar (partly owned by a Chinese company), including those made in the U.S., over concerns its Chinese-linked software poses a potential cyber risk. TikTok presents a larger risk, and Mr. Trump is mistaken if he thinks it doesn’t.