TikTok tries to sell ‘Project Texas’ as it fights for survival in the U.S. - CNBC

TikTok is going connected the violative successful Washington, D.C., successful a stepped-up effort to antagonistic calls to prohibition the app successful the U.S. implicit its Chinese ownership. 

Senior executives astatine the fashionable video app and their lobbyists person been briefing members of Congress, world researchers, deliberation vessel writers and others astir a $1.5 cardinal effort that they telephone Project Texas, laying retired details of however TikTok believes it tin code the concerns of radical who spot it arsenic a information threat, according to radical who said they had been briefed and media reports astir the lobbying. 

Some of the details appeared Thursday on the information blog Lawfare, wherever 2 radical provided a rundown of what they said they heard astatine 1 TikTok briefing past week. 

Matt Perault, 1 of the co-authors of the blog station and the manager of the Center connected Technology Policy astatine the University of North Carolina astatine Chapel Hill, said that overmuch of the governmental statement astir TikTok has been rooted successful guesswork, and that the briefing was a accidental to perceive the institution enactment guardant specifics. 

"The statement should beryllium grounded successful the realities of the planned operations alternatively than successful speculation astir what those plans whitethorn be," Perault said successful a telephone interview. 

He said his halfway has received backing from TikTok, but that helium had nary presumption connected whether TikTok's assurances were satisfactory. He said helium saw his relation successful the briefing arsenic a accidental to perceive details that helium and others could walk on to the public. Some details were besides reported by The New York Times on Thursday and earlier this period by The Wall Street Journal. 

TikTok did not instantly respond to requests for remark connected its lobbying propulsion Thursday. 

TikTok is facing the astir superior menace to its U.S. operations since 2020, erstwhile then-President Donald Trump tried to prohibition the app and mislaid successful court. Some governors person banned TikTok connected authorities machine networks, including at nationalist universities; Congress past period voted to prohibition TikTok from national authorities devices; and this week Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., resurrected the thought of a implicit nationwide ban. 

It's each portion of a strategy by China hawks and different TikTok critics to gradually obstruction successful TikTok and marque it hard oregon intolerable for radical to entree the app successful the U.S. 

And TikTok's troubles person lone deepened precocious aft reports astir its employees surveilling journalists astatine Forbes and astir its China-based employees accessing U.S. idiosyncratic data. 

It's not wide whether TikTok's latest effort successful Washington volition marque a difference, but it represents a alteration successful strategy for TikTok arsenic it continues multiyear negotiations with the Biden medication connected a imaginable information statement to allay information concerns. 

"We person shifted our approach," Erich Andersen, the wide counsel of ByteDance, the Chinese proprietor of TikTok, told the Times. 

Some of TikTok's critics accidental they resent however easy the institution has grown its lobbying beingness successful Washington by paying for apical firms. 

"China's strategy is: Seduce with wealth and reenforce with retaliation and intimidation," said Keith Krach, a erstwhile nether caput of authorities successful the Trump medication and erstwhile CEO of tech institution DocuSign. 

A cardinal spouse of TikTok is the U.S. computing elephantine Oracle, which has its office successful Austin, Texas, wherever TikTok whitethorn take to location the information of its U.S. users. The codification sanction "Project Texas" became nationalist past year. Oracle did not instantly respond to a petition for remark Thursday. 

Among the details disclosed by TikTok is that it volition make a committee of directors to oversee a caller subsidiary focused connected the information of U.S. data, with TikTok nominating the directors and U.S. authorities officials reviewing the names, according to the Lawfare blog post.