The United States passed a law last year requiring Chinese entertainment giant ByteDance to sell the app by Jan. 19, 2025, or face a ban.
Chinese authorities are weighing the possibility of Elon Musk buying TikTok’s American operations if the popular platform is banned in the United States by the end of the week, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The United States passed a law last year requiring Chinese entertainment giant ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19, 2025, or face a ban in the country where the app has 170 million users. The case went up to the American Supreme Court, which heard the arguments of both parties on Friday: Washington says it wants to prevent the risks of espionage and manipulation on the part of Beijing, while the social network and associations accuse the law to stifle freedom of expression. A clear majority of judges were prepared to authorize the ban.
The Chinese government and ByteDance have always openly opposed a sale of the American part of TikTok. But “Senior Chinese officials had already begun debating contingency plans for TikTok as part of a wide-ranging discussion about how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk”confidential sources told Bloomberg. “According to a scenario envisaged by the Chinese government, X (…) would take control of the American TikTok and manage the two companies together”specifies Bloomberg. The article notes, however, that the deliberations are “foreplay”.
Trump says he has a weakness for TikTok
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, created a surprise by displaying his desire to buy Twitter in early 2022. After months of twists and turns and attacks on the platform, he ended up acquiring it for $44 billion. The world’s richest man then renamed it X and used it extensively to support Donald Trump, in addition to his significant financial contributions to the Republican.
Donald Trump, who will be president of the United States again in a week, attempted to ban TikTok at the end of his first term in 2020, also in the name of national security. He has since returned to his duties, ensuring he has a “weak” for the application and its young audience. Besides electric cars and rockets, Elon Musk has co-founded other companies, including xAI, the most recent, specializing in generative artificial intelligence (AI), which requires mountains of fresh data: social networks are ideal for powering AI models. The entrepreneur also acquired political responsibilities. Donald Trump asked him to lead an external consulting mission to achieve massive savings in federal budgets.
