ByteDance can't buy Nvidia's chips for use in China, so it's renting them from Oracle right in America. Note: Trump Approves Deal Between Oracle and TikTok in 2020.
The US has banned companies like Nvidia from selling their most advanced AI chips to China since 2022. But if loopholes exist, profit-hungry corporations will find and exploit them.Not every company has been as willing as Oracle to skirt the law's intent. 'Two small American cloud providers' reportedly turned down offers to rent servers with Nvidia's H100 chips to ByteDance and China Telecom because 'they seemed to go against the spirit of U.S. chip restrictions.' However, Oracle, cofounded by Larry Ellison and run by current CEO Safra Catz, apparently found the opportunity for profit through technically legal workarounds too tempting to pass up.
But even if the US manages to shut down that exploit, The Information says it wouldn't cover Chinese cloud providers like Tencent and Alibaba from buying Nvidia's chips and using them to train AI models in their own US-based data centers. The Commerce Department will have its hands full figuring this one out as business and defense interests wrestle for control.
- Trump takes off on TikTok, the app he once tried to ban
The app is particularly attractive to Trump's campaign given there's a two-to-one ratio of pro-Trump versus pro-Biden content on the app, said a TikTok official.During his presidency, he tried to ban the app in the U.S. market over national security concerns - an effort eventually blocked in the federal courts.
But Trump has recently had a change of heart, opposing the TikTok legislation Biden signed.
- TikTok offered an extraordinary deal. The U.S. government took a pass.
The deal included extensive provisions never before offered to the government by a private company - including TikTok's U.S.-based peers in the tech industry, such as Google and Facebook.If ByteDance does not divest itself of TikTok's U.S. assets by the deadline, the government will make it unlawful to 'distribute, maintain, or update' the app within the United States.
Tech experts expect the order would largely be carried out by private companies: Apple and Google's app stores would be required to stop pushing out app updates or downloads, and Oracle would be forced to stop hosting the app's data and infrastructure on its U.S.-based servers.
- The legal challenges that lie ahead for TikTok - in both the US and China
Weighing national security against the First Amendment
While TikTok hasn't yet revealed how it plans to challenge the law, experts anticipate its arguments will largely hinge on the First Amendment, and the company has hinted at free expression issues in its messaging. In a video addressing TikTok users after Biden signed the foreign aid package that included the legislation, TikTok CEO Shou Chew called it 'a ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice.'
The missing piece many members of the public have waited for is clear evidence of the kinds of risks to US TikTok users that lawmakers have seen in their classified briefings, especially since those briefings seem to have convinced them to vote for the bill. But the public has remained in the dark about the specifics of the national security risks that the intelligence community believes are generated by the app.
- Universal signs TikTok deal allowing artists back on platform
The world's largest music company began pulling content from TikTok in February after falling out with TikTok over issues including artist compensation and the use of AI-generated music on the video-sharing app.
- China's influence operations against the U.S. are bigger than TikTok
Researchers at Microsoft as well as the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue have identified accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, posing as Trump supporters, attacking President Biden, and seizing on hot-button topics such as immigration. Microsoft said some accounts even seemed to be polling American voters on what issues divided them most.
- TikTok will not be sold, Chinese parent tells US
"ByteDance doesn't have any plans to sell TikTok," the company posted on its official account on Toutiao, a social media platform it owns.Earlier this week, TikTok said it would challenge in court the "unconstitutional" law.
- Who could buy TikTok?
Steven Mnuchin, an investment banker who served as treasury secretary under Trump, said he was getting a group of investors together to potentially buy TikTok, although he did not specify who. He also did not share a potential valuation for the app. - $20 billion to $100 billion+'Shark Tank' investor and businessman Kevin 'Leary said in an interview with Fox News that TikTok isn't going to get banned 'cause I'm going to buy it.'
- Here's what happened when India banned TikTok
“There was a clamour leading up to this, and the popular narrative was how can we allow Chinese companies to do business in India when we’re in the middle of a military standoff,” said Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy expert and founder of tech website MediaNama.In India, the ban in 2020 was swift. TikTok and other companies were given time to respond to questions on privacy and security, and by January 2021, it became a permanent ban.
But for the most part, content creators and users in the four years since the ban have moved on to other platforms.
- ByteDance, TikTok shelled out $7 million on lobbying
- Donald Trump Slams Joe Biden Over TikTok Ban That Trump Backed As President
Trump softened his stance on TikTok this year despite calling the app a national security threat when he was in the White House.Congress is on the verge of passing a bill that would require TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok in less than a year or else see the video-sharing platform banned from US app stores. Biden supports the policy and has said he would sign the bill into law.
- Elon Musk is opposing Tiktok ban
"It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill," a company spokesman said.He added a ban would "trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy annually."
Moscow MTG Literally Curses Mike Johnson's Speakership After Ukraine Vote
Speaking to CNN outside the Capitol following an overwhelming bipartisan vote in favor of Ukraine aid, Greene fumed over Johnson's alleged offenses, culminating in the Ukraine vote, which she called 'this bullshit in here on the House floor.'
- How GOP Megadonor Jeffrey Yass Can Clean Up on TikTok's Forced Sale
You may remember Donald Trump once denouncing TikTok, the social video app that includes an estimated 150 million users in the United States and nearly 2 billion globally. Invoking the now-familiar rhetoric about the short-form video app bewitching America's youth on behalf of our Chinese adversaries, Trump even tried to force TikTok's sale to a consortium that included Oracle centi-billionaire Larry Ellison, one of his political benefactors.
Yass reached out and asked him to speak at a retreat for a powerful right-wing business PAC, the Club for Growth, which has pulled in $61 million in donations from Yass since 2010. The Club for Growth also happens to be employing former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to lobby on behalf of TikTok on Capitol Hill.
That’s no small concern, given Yass’s hard-right ideological profile. Trump is likely sidling up to him as a potential Zuckerberg-scale force in social media who closely aligns with the MAGA movement’s policy preferences.
He and some friends also made hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing a sophisticated betting scheme at race tracks across the country. After one track kicked them out, Yass sued the track owner in federal court. He lost.
- The Jews Aren’t Taking Away TikTok
But conspiracy theories that say otherwise are coming for democracy itself.'The entire world knows exactly why the U.S. is trying to ban TikTok,' James Li declared on March 16 to his nearly 100,000 followers on the social-media platform. His video then cut to a subtitled clip of a Taiwanese speaker purportedly discussing how 'TikTok inadvertently offended the Jewish people' by hosting pro-Palestinian content. 'The power of the Jewish people in America is definitely more scary than Trump,' the speaker goes on. 'They have created the options: either ban or sell to the Americans. In reality, it's neither-it's selling to a Jewish investment group.'
- How China uses TikTok to influence Taiwan's society
Yu Chih-hao, a software designer and co-director of the Taiwanese Information Environment Research Center, or IORG, delivered a presentation on Taiwan's experience of Chinese interference at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday. He said his organization analyzes the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) influence and impact on Taiwan's information environment through its activities.
- How an Obscure Chinese Real Estate Start-Up Paved the Way to TikTok
Court records, mistakenly made public, tell a story about the birth of ByteDance, its bumpy road to success and the role of the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass’s firm.In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm.
The records also show that Mr. Yass's firm was more deeply involved in TikTok's genesis than previously known. It has been widely reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Susquehanna owns roughly 15 percent of ByteDance, but the documents make clear that the firm was no passive investor. It nurtured Mr. Zhang's career and signed off on the idea for the company.
Either way, Yass can claim a major financial conquest, but he will have won for the wrong reasons. If the Senate goes along with the House bill, President Biden will have the effective power to mandate a US-backed takeover of the app within 165 days under threat of a permanent stateside ban.
Having made peace with Trump, Yass gets his turn with the tiller of Republican policy. The former president may have a paper-thin ego, but he’s also easily bought—particularly with a dizzying array of court fines before him. That’s no doubt why Trump is reportedly considering Yass as a potential treasury secretary. For this lifelong gambler, TikTok turned out to be the perfect bet.