Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

Are you talking about Huawei? If there is IP and IP infringement why not sue the company? I thought there is tons of cases of IP lawsuits each year? Huawei has operations in many markets like Europe with strong rule of law, sue Huawei in Europe. There are two law suits against Huawei from Cisco and T-Mobile. The first case both parties settled out of court. Second case is about a phone test arm, and already settled after ruling by courts. Huawei's main technology, and where U.S. gov has a problem with is with 5G. Huawei actually has a lot of patients in 5G. Many companies licences their technology. If there is a legitimate case of IP theft, then sue the company.

TikTok is operated by the TikTok office in the U.S. ByteDance is incorporated in Cayman islands so Chinese laws do not have any jurisdiction over TikTok office. There is no way for Chinese government to force their censorship rules and steal data from TikTok data stored in the US. Unless tiktok employees in the US office hands the data to China. But TikTok employees in the US office are all American. The CEO of TikTok is Kevin Mayer. The content regulation team is staffed with American employees. Data is stored in US servers and backed up in Singapore. TikTok is hiring more in the US office to develop TikTok going forward. TikTok also plans to experts can observe our moderation policies in real-time, as well as examine the actual code that drives our algorithms. Source: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/fair-competition-and-trans... Source: Bytedance corporate structure https://www.bytedance.com/en

But the US gov is not giving TikTok any opportunity to explain themselves. Whatever Bytedance management can do, there is no way for them to shake off the belief that TikTok sends data to the US government.

As for ByteDance, the founder of Bytedance is a Chinese national. But the board member also includes non Chinese people. Chinese people do not all agree with the government. And Chinese people definitely do not want to work for or help the government unless absolutely required under Chinese law. Chinese people enjoy freedom and distance from Chinese government as well. A lot of Chinese people admire the US for its rule of law, its innovation and the general classiness when doing things. This is especially true in the entrepreneur and technology scene in China, where the US is often looked up to. People want to be friendly. No one wants to undermine the U.S. No one wants to be associated with the government or work as a spy to steal data.

I have been following the creation and growth of tiktok and douyin since the beginning. There are many interviews and news story about the company and the founders. The creation of tiktok is to spread happiness, creativity, raw human ingenuity through music, dances and user generated video. And all the founder wanted to do is develop a business from that and earn money from that. They worked really hard to develop the product, the marketing and the user base. The least they wanted is to be tied with politics, ideology wars, fake news, disinformation, political propaganda. The founder, zhang yiming, is a technologists and software engineer, not a politician, not a ccp ideologist. He has always displayed a general likeness and admiration towards the US since the beginning. I mean, why won't he? He studied C++, Javascript, big data, coding for IOS and Android. All of that comes from the U.S. And he has collaborated with US business people since the beginning. I guess his friendliness and admiration to US is why he entered the US market, step up office in the US and hired US employees.

But now they are caught between politics in China, ideology battle, and geopolitics.They are seeing their hard work going down the drain, and asking themselves "Probably my biggest crime is born in mainland China". No matter what they do, they cant shake off people's belief that they work for the Chinese government. Its a profound feeling of hopelessness.

At the time she was considered a star, at least in my circles.

Honestly, you have some valid points and this bullying by forcing it to be sold is bad.

I think the fear is the manipulation that social media platforms can easily do of discourse and emotions. This is not as simple as just selling word processing software.

We have seen manipulation on US's own social media platforms by actors not even inside the company. Imagine a government which has supreme control on the companies on its own soil, imagine what it can do. I would say the fear is well founded, the solution to is not.

In case of the companies under free governments and justice systems, this becomes hard as any FB employee can go out and use the free press to expose if any manipulation like this is ordered.

You obviously don't have much experience with China. China is an authoritarian state and all companies are subject to secret control by the state, essentially branches of the military. There is no legal recourse or protection from such intervention. The government can mandate spy code be inserted and any data they want.

You're well intended here, but ignorant of how China operates. There is literally no way to enforce what you suggest.

> US would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China, the spirit of free market and rule by law.

No it won't change a thing. And to be fair, forcing a sell (which is just forcing it to exit all stakes in the US market) is a far cleaner move than trying to end the company globally like it's doing for Huawei.

> This act is pure bullying and imperialism.

This is nothing compared to overthrowing Iran's democratic government to instate a puppet monarchy, helping the despot build 23 nuclear power plants, losing the puppet to revolution because the CIA assisted secret police killed too many people, claiming the built power plants are evidence of nuclear ambitions, sanctioning the country against UN resolutions, then using the economic aggression as justification to chain imperialize against other people such as Meng Wanzhou who was arrested unlike the CFOs of Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS, Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank, Standard Chartered, Wells Fargo, Ericsson, Nokia who all transact with Iran.

And this is an arrest based on the accusation that she did not disclose (she did, on page 6 of her HSBC powerpoint) Huawei's transactions with Iran in her HSBC loan. The same HSBC with a non-arrested CFO who transacted with Iran and whose drug trafficking heat from the US magically disappeared after snitching their client.

The world will sleep through this like the world slept through the same round of tariffs, executive arrests, banning suppliers and technologies like we did to Japan in the 80s.