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After years of saber-rattling and partisan theater, TikTok has finally signed binding agreements to form a new U.S. joint venture that includes Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and investment firm MGX, a deal set to close on January 22, 2026. This is a welcome, if overdue, recognition that American firms and government oversight must have a decisive role when a platform reaches the scale and influence of TikTok. The move spares the country an ugly ban fight and gives Washington a chance to put teeth behind its national security concerns.
Under the proposed structure, the new U.S. entity will be majority-controlled by American investors, with roughly 45 percent held by the investor consortium, about 19.9 percent staying with ByteDance, and the rest with existing affiliates — plus a seven-member board with an American majority. Oracle will reportedly host U.S. user data locally and serve as a security partner, a sensible precaution that should have been required from day one. These structural changes will be judged not by glossy press releases but by whether they actually block foreign influence over American data and Americans’ information diet.
Make no mistake: Congress and the White House used the heavy hand of law to force this outcome. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was signed into law on April 24, 2024, and deadlines and executive actions followed that put real pressure on ByteDance to divest or face removal from app stores. The company’s deal now comes just ahead of enforcement deadlines extended by the administration, which shows that political will — not Silicon Valley’s usual game of delay — finally moved the needle.
Yet the deal leaves room for warranted skepticism. ByteDance’s retention of a 19.9 percent stake and murky descriptions of algorithm control mean Americans should not accept platitudes about “retraining” as a substitute for hard guarantees. Security experts and reporters note the centrality of TikTok’s recommendation engine and question whether retraining on U.S. data and Oracle’s oversight will really eliminate pathways for foreign manipulation. If the administration and Congress are serious, they must insist on verifiable, auditable controls and permanent operational separation, not a cosmetic rearrangement of ownership.
This outcome also exposes the strategic incompetence of the prior administration and corporate elites who treated national-security risks like an abstract policy memo. Conservatives who pushed hard for real consequences — and who demanded American control over critical infrastructure — were proved right to distrust easy assurances. At the same time, Americans should remember which leaders used law and enforcement wisely to produce results, and which tried to paper over the problem with talk.
Now comes the hard work: enforcing the terms and guaranteeing transparency. Oracle and the investor consortium must be held publicly accountable, with independent audits, routine congressional oversight, and clear penalties if ByteDance or foreign governments find backdoors into U.S. systems. This is not a time for partisan complacency or for elites to celebrate a deal while leaving vulnerabilities in place. The American people and their representatives must insist on permanent, verifiable safeguards.
For everyday Americans — parents, small-business creators, and patriotic workers — this is a reminder that national security matters online as much as it does at our borders. Protecting our kids and our data requires vigilance, not blind trust in the same global tech oligarchs who have too often put profit over country. Congress, oversight bodies, and the new board must make sure this deal results in real American control and accountability, because anything less would be a betrayal of the national interest.
