White House: TikTok's U.S. Operations to Be Run by American Joint Venture, Security Handled by Oracle

Executive Order on TikTok Deal Expected to Be Signed Later This Week

A new joint venture, with a majority of American investors and board members, is expected to take over the U.S. operations of the Chinese video platform TikTok.

AP Yonhap News

On September 22 (local time), a senior White House official stated during a conference call, "President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have been negotiating another outstanding agreement for the American people," adding, "TikTok's U.S. operations will be transferred to a new joint venture that will be based in the United States. The joint venture will be majority-owned by American investors and owners, and the board of directors will also be composed mainly of Americans."

The security operations of the new joint venture are expected to be managed by the American software company Oracle. The official explained, "Oracle will provide comprehensive security regarding how the TikTok application is installed on mobile phones, how it interacts with devices, how it is updated, how Americans' data is stored, and how the content recommendation algorithm functions." Regarding the algorithm issue, he said, "We had to reach a compromise that satisfies not only U.S. law but also the requirements of Chinese domestic law," describing it as "a very difficult point in the negotiations." He further added, "A copy of the content recommendation algorithm will be brought to the new U.S. joint venture, where a security firm will thoroughly inspect it and retrain it based on data from American users."

TikTok, which has more than 170 million American users and is extremely popular in the United States, has raised concerns that it could be used for Chinese personal data theft or hacking, given that its parent company is China's ByteDance. In response, the U.S. Congress enacted the "TikTok Ban Act" last year, which prohibits TikTok's service in the U.S. unless its American business is sold to a U.S. company.

The Trump administration has been negotiating with China to allow Americans to continue using TikTok by postponing the implementation of this law and seeking a plan for U.S. companies to acquire TikTok's major shareholder stakes. Recently, both countries announced that they had reached a broad agreement. The White House official said, "President Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week," adding that the order will state, "The terms of this TikTok deal meet national security requirements and constitute a legally qualified asset sale."

The executive order will also include an extension of the current sanctions grace period to allow investors and TikTok to complete the necessary paperwork to finalize the transaction. As a result, the official projected that the TikTok-related deal will be completed 120 days after the executive order is signed.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.