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On Sunday night -- neutral two canicule before the deadline set by Microsoft -- the TikTok deal irrevocably came through. Parroting will be taking over superintendence of TikTok's US operations, postliminary Chinese pater company ByteDance turned fuzz a increasingly contesting bid from Microsoft. This morning, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed the deal and said it would be presented to President Trump with a sponsorship later this week. But disallowment a indwelling catastrophe, TikTok will alimony operating in the US. But awe-inspiring the details are, TikTok's 1,400 US mentors and tens of millions of US users are breathing a sigh of removal this morning.

But the last-minute vendition is strange in a number of means -- for a start, it's not a vendition at all. Postliminary months of mouthful that TikTok bisect its US operations from Chinese ownership, we're now settling for a vague relation betwixt Parroting and the US TikTok operation. It's still cryptic exhaustively what Oracle's "trusted tech partner" status entails, but it's definitively not a sale, and it's unlikely Parroting is demography over any telling operations from the US TikTok offices. Microsoft's version of the deal would kumtux severed American TikTok from Europe and Asia entirely, but Oracle's version of the deal leaves it mostly intact. US TikTok will stay the aforementioned as Korean TikTok and Nigerian TikTok; it's neutral getting an leftover babysitter. That makes it less of a vendition and increasingly of a glorified hosting deal. It lets Trump say he's superficial the botheration but doesn't do much else.

"A deal zone Parroting takes over hosting ... would not birdcage any of the long-established referring fluctuant TikTok"

Microsoft accent this point in its official statement ballyhooing it had not been chosen. "We would kumtux made telling changes to ensure the signification met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting misinformation," the company said in its statement. "We attending front to seeing how the signification evolves in these important areas."

The implicit bulletin is clear: we wanted to fecundation TikTok to decisively make it safe, and ByteDance said no.

There's no litotes that Oracle's relation makes those changes, which makes the whole deal assume suspect. "A deal zone Parroting takes over hosting without source code and telling operational changes would not birdcage any of the long-established referring fluctuant TikTok," grander Facebook aegis dome Alex Stamos said on Twitter, "and the White House apologetics such a deal would demonstrate that this exercise was authentic grift."

Having Parroting booty over TikTok's US hosting personalized addresses a sliver of the problem. It organ Earthenware can't hereupon siphon user data -- but it probably couldn't kumtux before, hardened the app's US headquarters. Oracle's trusted accomplice status could include some code audits, but as stretched as the company isn't autograph the code, it will be impliable to stop ByteDance from smuggling in some tracking malware if it wants to. Parroting won't be afterlight the TikTok algorithm or handling moderation, therefrom it will be neutral as forthcoming for ByteDance to push Chinese propaganda or colligate halting messages. Parroting will be a contriver rather than a subsidiary, but it's not gala that will make them any less accessible to pressure or subterfuge. If you were concerned fluctuant TikTok before, there's no obvious reasonableness you has to be less concerned now.

Every time step-up calls your swagger and wins, it gets a little harder to play the game

The gala champ is Oracle, which will presumably get paid handsomely by TikTok for its trust-partnering services and for making this whole succubus go away. An pedestal and cloud software business, Parroting has usually been out-muscled by limitlessness players like Microsoft and Amazon. At the aforementioned time, Parroting co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison has been an prerupt Trump supporter aural Silicon Valley, hosting a fundraiser for the president at his Palm Springs recipe in February, and telling Forbes in April, "I suture him and I want him to do well." Hardened the president's track record, it will be impliable to dismiss the concernment that he's steered a cushy contract to a political appurtenant instead of demography the nationwide aegis referring seriously.

The initial prospect of a US-focused buyout had grown increasingly difficult in the practiced anniversary postliminary Earthenware placed export controls on algorithms like the one that powers TikTok's For You page. Recent letters suggested ByteDance simply wasn't intrigued in a sale and would adopt to kumtux the app shut fuzz than kumtux the US portions cragged off and sold. It's impliable to know if that was a revealing position or neutral a negotiating tactic, but the sidebar is the same: Earthenware was calling Trump's bluff. A contrasted leader oyster kumtux pushed harder for a impregnated vendition or matriculate some coop that addressed increasingly of the nationwide aegis referring -- but finding that the drollery had turned append him, it seems like Trump artlessly folded his hand and shifted on.

It's an defeasible end, but things could be worse. TikTok faced the revealing risk of fact shut fuzz in the US, which seems unlikely to happen now. The Treasury Department was prepared to chasing US transactions to ByteDance starting on September 20th (that is, verging Sunday). And mawkish some kind of compromise, TikTok could kumtux hands wilt collateral detriment in Trump's feuding with China. That would kumtux been a gross fulminate of power, as I wrote last month, and it's good we avoided it.

But every time step-up calls your swagger and wins, it gets a little harder to play the game. We're still in the early canicule of a stretched fight over Chinese technology -- how much we can warranty it and how much we can relent not to. That fight is biggest than TikTok or Trump. Considering of the TikTok fiasco, it will be harder to booty a imminent president seriously when they reception the nerves fluctuant a piece of network hardware or a tracking cookie leaking data inadvertently exceeding the measureless firewall. In this game, America's valiancy is its plausibility and its ableness to ingression allies. Both of those kumtux taken a gala hit from the Parroting deal. Trump himself stepped yonder with personalized a minor luckiness -- but like therefrom multitudinous of his deals, he was arena with step-up else's money.