U.S. Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin on Monday (Sept. 14) calling on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to reject Oracle’s proposal to partner with Beijing-based Byte Jumping to acquire TikTok’s U.S. business.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin confirmed that the administration has received a proposal from U.S. enterprise software company Oracle for a partnership with Byte Jumping’s TikTok (Jitterbug Overseas).
The Trump administration issued an executive order on Aug. 6 setting a deadline for byte-hopping companies to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or shut them down for national security reasons and to protect Americans’ private data.
TikTok, along with Oracle, had been in talks with U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. for an acquisition, and retail giant Walmart joined the Microsoft acquisition team. The Chinese government’s subsequent announcement of a ban on the sale of algorithms added complexity to the deal.
Senator Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, demanded that TikTok must sell its entire U.S. business, as well as its algorithms, to a U.S. company. He argued that the partnership between Oracle and Byte-Tek allows the Chinese Communist Party to continue to control TikTok, putting Americans’ data at risk and violating President Trump’s executive order.
In a letter to Secretary Mnuchin, Senator Hawley wrote: “CFIUS should immediately reject any Oracle-Byte Jump collaboration and send the ball back to Byte Jump so that the company can come up with a more acceptable solution. ByteBounce could still seek a full sale of TikTok, its coding, and its algorithms to a U.S. company so that the application can be rebuilt from the ground up to remove any trace of Chinese influence. Or, given the constraints imposed by Chinese law, perhaps the only viable way to maintain U.S. security is to effectively ban TikToK from the U.S. altogether.”
Hawley also wrote: “Under no circumstances, unless the TikTok software is completely liberated from potential Chinese Communist Party control, any other current ‘partnership’ is completely unacceptable and in absolute violation of the President’s August 6 Executive Order. “
Before the Trump administration issued its executive order on TikTok, some members of Congress had been calling for action against TikTok, a short-form video sharing platform that is popular in the United States and other parts of the world and has attracted many young people. They cited concerns about national security, data privacy, and the Chinese Communist Party’s extension of censorship of its speech abroad.
VOA has learned that other lawmakers who have been following TikTok are learning details of Oracle’s proposal to partner with TikTok, and are expected to comment soon. One Democratic congressman told VOA that it would be unacceptable if TikTok did not sell its coding and algorithms. A Republican congressman told VOA that any solution must cut off ties with the Chinese Communist Party whenever data is involved.
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