The Department of Commerce announced that it will delay its TikTok ban related to an August executive order announcing the measure by one week; the app store ban would have been in effect starting on Sunday, September 20, but will now go into effect on September 27 at 11:59 p.m. The ban would have prevented downloads, updates, and maintenance of the app, and other transactions which would have effectively rendered it useless. Meanwhile, Oracle and Walmart announced tentative United States government approval of their agreement on Saturday.
Under the agreement designed to resolve the government’s national security concerns over TikTok’s Chinese ownership, Oracle and Walmart will invest together to acquire 20 percent of the newly created TikTok Global business, which “will be majority owned by American investors, including Oracle and Walmart. TikTok Global will be an independent American company, headquartered in the U.S., with four Americans out of the five member Board of Directors.”
The Trump administration also tentatively approved the deal whereby Oracle will become TikTok’s “trusted technology provider” by serving as TikTok’s secure cloud provider. All of TikTok’s technology will be owned by TikTok Global and comply with United States laws and regulations. According to the company, Americans’ data will be moved to Oracle’s Generation 2 Cloud data centers, which “fully isolates running applications and responds to security threats autonomously. This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation.”
“As a part of this agreement, TikTok will run on the Oracle Cloud and Oracle will become a minority investor in TikTok Global,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz said. “Oracle will quickly deploy, rapidly scale, and operate TikTok systems in the Oracle Cloud. We are a hundred percent confident in our ability to deliver a highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users, and users throughout the world. This greatly improved security and guaranteed privacy will enable the continued rapid growth of the TikTok user community to benefit all stakeholders.”
TikTok previously sued the Trump administration in August over the President’s August Executive Order initiating the ban over, calling it unconstitutional. However, TikTok voluntarily dismissed the suit on Sunday following the government’s tentative approval.
