Ownership and geopolitical factors underpin earlier restrictions: Experts

The United States' decision to lift a ban on TikTok for federal devices shows that earlier restrictions hinged largely on ownership and geopolitical factors, prompting Washington to re-examine its earlier security rationale, experts said.

Their comments came as the White House Office of Management and Budget rescinded its 2023 implementation directive in a memo dated Monday, saying the popular social media app no longer poses a national security threat and may be used on US government devices.

Chen Hong, director of East China Normal University's Asia-Pacific Studies Center, said the move carries symbolic weight beyond the limited number of federal devices directly affected.

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"This is undoubtedly an important restoration of TikTok's standing in the US market," Chen told China Daily. The ban labeled TikTok as a national security risk, while its removal means that label has been removed in legal and administrative terms, he added.

"The move also reflected regulatory acceptance of the platform's operations and recognition of its compliance and security safeguards," said Pan Helin, a member of the expert committee for information and communication economy under China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In a sense, the policy shift came as the US government no longer had a basis for maintaining the restriction after TikTok's corporate structure was adjusted, Pan added.

The view follows a legal opinion from the US Department of Justice last month, saying that the restructured US version falls outside the statutory prohibition because the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture, operating independently of Chinese tech heavyweight ByteDance, is majority-owned by US investors and has revised its recommendation algorithm and cybersecurity program.

"The policy shift suggests that Washington's earlier security concerns over TikTok were driven primarily by its ownership structure and country of origin, rather than by specific technical risks," Pan said.

Chen echoed that the sequence of events exposes a weakness in the earlier security narrative. If TikTok had presented a major technical vulnerability, he said, that vulnerability could not have disappeared solely because the equity ratio and board composition changed.

In fact, the restructuring does not settle the wider debate over privacy protection. In an analysis published while the deal was taking shape last year, Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, wrote that "the absence of a comprehensive US privacy law means that even with TikTok in the hands of American investors, concerns about user protections would persist".

Policy implications

Chen noted that TikTok has withstood repeated pressure largely because it is deeply embedded in the daily activities of US users, creators and small businesses, which would bear much of the cost of a ban.

"The lesson for US digital governance is that national security should not become an ever-expanding concept," Chen said. "Nor should every commercial, technological and social issue be securitized simply because a platform's parent company comes from a particular country."

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The case also offers a cautionary lesson for Chinese technology companies entering the US market, where geopolitical risk assessment and response planning should be built into their overseas expansion strategies, Chen said.

"Companies should distinguish technical issues from politically driven allegations and, when faced with security claims unsupported by evidence, call for verifiable facts and standards applied consistently to all market participants," he added.

Contact the writers at lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn