Tiktok, Data Security, and the Future of the Internet

The fate of the app TikTok in the United States is an ongoing international soap opera. President Trump first raised concern about the app in July after it and other Chinese owned apps were banned in India. Trump cites concerns about the app’s ownership, Beijing based ByteDance, giving the Chinese communist party the ability to spy on US citizens and partake in other shenanigans, like interfering with elections. Evidence of this actually happening is not present, however, due to the relationship of private enterprise and government in China, as well as China and the United States’ precarious relationship, most experts believe it is imperative for the United States to fight incursions into our data and society from Beijing. 

Since the process of managing TikTok in the US began, it has been a constant back and forth between Washington and Beijing. The first executive order marking the beginning of the end for Tiktok in the US was signed in August stating that Bytedance must sell the US sector of TikTok by September 15 or face serious restrictions. This was later extended to a 90 day window. In the ensuing days many suitor companies entered talks to incorporate TikTok. The list included: Oracle, Microsoft, Twitter, and others. After forging a partnership with Walmart, Microsoft seemed to be the leader, but in early September they announced Bytedance had rejected their offers. This left Oracle, who Walmart soon again teamed up with to create a preliminary deal with Bytedance. Then, Trump suddenly issued another executive order calling for the removal of TikTok from US app stores by Sunday, September 20. The Oracle deal was confirmed the same weekend saving TikTok from removal. The deal gives Oracle and Walmart a 20% stake in Tiktok while Bytedance maintains 80%. Additionally, the board of TikTok will include 5 Americans, and most importantly, Oracle will provide the cloud infrastructure to keep US user data within US borders. It seemed like the skies were finally clearing for TikTok and Bytedance, but on September 21 President Trump contradicted past statements by saying the US needed “total control over TikTok”. 

This acquisition nightmare not only represents current geopolitical strife but also tells the story of data security and how the internet will evolve. Trump’s focus on TikTok’s control of US user data demonstrates the growing importance of the control of data in society. Nobody understands this concept better than the Chinese. China has gone so far to control what data its citizens can access that over the past decade they have constructed what is known as the great firewall. This digital monolith stops Chinese citizens from accessing sites run by many US companies such as Facebook and Google, instead giving them Chinese run alternatives like WeChat that the Chinese government has pretty direct control over. The European Union and India have put in place their own measures to ensure the safety of their citizen’s data on US platforms. So, the US is really behind the curve. Other world leaders have been treating data security as a national security issue rather than one of private industry for a decade or more. 

Nations are probably right to be concerned about who has access to the data of their citizens. Our world today is centered around the internet, and websites and other online services likely know more information about users than the users know about themselves. These protections do, however, come with consequences. The first cost is exacted on large tech companies. How much money does Google lose by not being able to serve the 1 billion-plus population of China? How does Bytedance lose access to the massive US market? These questions are certainly of great concern to the Silicon Valley elite, but we all face the consequences of these measures. This pattern of increasing restriction on the internet indicates what the future will likely look like. The internet has flourished and brought so much innovation because it has always been a place of mostly unrestricted access to information. As we begin to draw digital borders to match those on the map, we start to lose that unfettered nature that made the internet what it is today. If we set a precedent for restricting internet services of foreign nations on our soil, we will undoubtedly lose the connectivity that has fueled the prosperity of the digital age.