1. New, US-specific TikTok App, separate from the main TikTok app in content and users.
2. 80% owned by a U.S. investor consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz, 20% by Bytedance.
3. Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.
4. All U.S. user data would sit on Oracle infrastructure in the US.
5. Algorithm will be initially licensed, but has to be reengineered to comply with the law.
Not discussed - whether the US tiktok app is allowed to compete with TikTok outside of the US. My guess is NO.
They'll probably get what they really want, which is an admin console for the algorithm that has a 'political slant' slider that they can slide as far to the reich as they wish.
Before: we’re spying on you, but here’s a copy!
After: we’ve moved the spy machine to Ashburn VA, here are the keys.
Why?
The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an important social media outlet. I don't love that reasoning, but fine, whatever.
So they're forcibly selling it to an American company. Which should solve the problem, right?
Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term.
And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.
That wouldn't be a bad thing. How good has unchecked Zuckerberg been for us, really?
> Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Or the one where there's some level to force on them, like here. If Zuckerberg starts needing government cash to keep Facebook going, I'd expect a similar deal.
In other words, one's data will now be under the scrutiny of amoral radicals who have decided to target people for political speech.
Won't be long until all companies will be required to have a party office.
Legally required to use the services of a specific company, that's a sweet deal right there.
> The central feature of Project Texas is our work with Oracle to isolate the TikTok services serving U.S. users within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment as an additional safeguard. Although gateways to the storage infrastructure are strictly monitored and controlled, U.S. users of the TikTok platform can still communicate and interact with global users for a cohesive global experience.
Also, I see creators, trying to create US based TikTok accounts because they believe that this way their content will be shown to Americans, which are better monetized. If that’s the case, I wonder if international creator will move to the American TikTok for the better payout.
It the international creators stay with the international TikTok IMHO that will be a huge win for China, practically displacing American culture for the younger demographic in the rest of the world.
Look at recent events: American government officials want to maintain the same level of toxic culture wars that foreign governments want. They just want to control them, not contain them.
If I were China I would do this deal and then ensure that the payout is better outside the US. Try to sway US content creators to use VPN's and post outside the US and essentially limit the impact of the deal.
Huh? Are you not aware of US social media companies?
Everything that's happening on TikTok is also happening on X, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever the kids are using these days. The only difference is that the TikTok algorithm promotes Chinese propaganda and ideology, and enriches the Chinese government and ByteDance. The US can't have that, hence this deal.
This won't affect the American downward spiral a single iota. That would require strong regulation of social media companies and adtech in general, and there would be a nationwide revolt if that were even proposed. This is far from being considered anyway, now that Big Tech is deeply entrenched in the government.
IMO this significantly impacts the value I would get from TikTok, as much of the content I consume on the app is from outside the US
I guess they are hoping the US market will be big enough so self sustain and even entice some foreigners to join the US only app?
I wonder where all the liberal content will go.
The government board director is one thing, but what exactly does this mean?
The licensing approach is a temporary solution to keep the app working from day 1. One of ByteDance's complaints during the lawsuit earlier this year was that is was going to be technically infeasible for engineers to rebuild something as complex and essential as the content algorithm in the short window of time they had before the law went into effect.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
"The term “qualified divestiture” means a divestiture or similar transaction that ... would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary; and ... precludes the establishment or maintenance of any operational relationship between [the two apps/teams], including any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing."
Just ban children from the internet, make it the responsibility of the parents. Its that simple. Make it illegal for kids to have access, especially to user generated content (incl chat), same level as firearms, pharma drugs, voting, entering into contracts etc. Internet is and was never a place for children to begin with.
Very interesting! The separate "in content" bit in particular. Sounds like US TikTok will now be one giant echo chamber. Users outside the US will miss some US content but tbh, I find TikTok content is actually quite localised anyway. Big benefits for users outside the US are:
1. US doesn't get my data.
2. Hopefully less US political BS to swipe past.
3. I am much less concerned with the sway China has on Western Europe than the sway the US has and am therefore much happier using a China-backed version of the app sans US content/users/control/propaganda. The extreme brain rot causing people outside the US to care about 'MAGA' or that recently assassinated man will hopefully start to recede. That can only be a good thing. We have plenty of our own polarising issues without importing irrelevant ones.
I'm from Europe so if I want to follow US content creators, I need to download separate US specific app?! Kinda silly.
This gives me vibes of a weird company takeover, a la the kinds of things that happened in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: government-driven benefits to large corporations and investors with friends in the right places, government involvement, forced licensure of a core aspect of the product (Rearden Metal?).
I’d like to learn more about: what are some other similar instances of such a thing?
tl;dr: the entire US media is now controlled by men who've bent the knee to Trump and have demonstrated that theyre willing to take an activist editorial role.
owned by canadian oligarchs, with one CBC appointed director
Last week's announcement that they have a 500 B deal with Open AI, and now this.
Elon really fucked up!
1. DOA app nobody wants
2. whocares
3. see 2
Good luck to the administration while trying to roll this out.
Why does the board of TikTok need a gov member? Is Meta going to get a gov chaperone too? And Oracle surely needs one as well.
Is the gov putting out a call for board member civil servants? Like where does this person even come from?
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-cbs-ne...
They want their guy to make sure things go their way / people say the "right" things.
Kenneth Weinstein.
"Mr. Weinstein has had a long career in right-leaning and neoconservative public policy circles. He is a firm and vocal champion of Israel." (NyTimes)
In Brazil during the dictatorship it was common for newspapers to print cooking recipes in place of censored articles, now I'm waiting to see if media in the USA has the balls to play the malicious compliance game... I guess I won't see it since money is basically God in America.
They already got quite a few, post 2024 election.
https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/dana-white-john-elkann-cha...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/tech/robby-starbuck-meta-ai-a...
Washed-up music video director to professional Twitter poster to advisor at Facebook. What a display of the American meritocracy.
I believe the technical name is "Political Commissar."
Edit: Dana White, of MMA fame, now sits on Meta's board, though it is at Zuckerberg's request.
There are several ActivityPub services that are pretty good and even have decent UXes, but they aren't super active.
A major issue is it's confusing and the funds are limited.
This exists today, it has always existed, and you never needed technology to find the solution to it.
Im a huge fan of the film Rope, because it is just done well. Its also got a ton of coding in it for "homosexual" themes that were very much banned at the time of filming. Understanding these paints the film in a whole new way...
Shakespeare has a ton of contemporary satire coded into it. Unless you're aware of history or reading a version that illuminates the meta-context you would very much be unaware of its existence.
It happens in modern film: Paul Verhoeven is a master of it.
If you dont think there are coded communities on existing social platforms sharing information among in members I have news for you.
This means that the only people you will encounter in protocols will be privacy freak type nerds and “normal” people you might actually feel better interacting with or watching are on popular apps.
It makes me immediately suspicious when someone wants to reach _everbody_, that's never good and we shouldn't let them. Ideas will grow if they're good, if you have to spend money to make people listen, they're not.
Open AI, free speech platforms, save the planet, democratize information. At the end of the day, it’s always about power.
first Twitter, now Tiktok, both controlled by conservative interests?
Therefore I’m only left to conclude this is an entirely unsubstantiated claim, as why wouldn’t it have already been apparent if they were working as shadow brokers of Israeli interests in all this, which the general timeline and verifiable information we know don’t line up with?
Edit: Not to mention universities. It’s crazy how quickly civil institutions are being consolidated by the right. They have gone all in and there appears to be insufficient appetite to stop them.
fixed that for you
The bill itself outlines specifically how and why it can be delayed. That was violated in the very first "delay".
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914032065/tiktok-ban-averted-...
Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]
This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
[2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/paramount-warner-bros-disco...
Today, there are many, many sources of 'news' online. So many that the net effect is that most of those sources lean one way or the other, and by and large people choose to listen mostly or only to those sources they agree with.
No wonder political opinions are so highly divided today. Almost no one ever hears anything from the other side.
That's not Larry Ellison, it's his nepo baby David Ellison.
Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison
Ok someone's going to come and say that "The Left" controlled the medium and disallowed "non-mainstream" messaging about Covid... I admit my bias and consider such messaging lunacy too..
Again? People should be talking about the hostile take-over currently in progress and how it is getting exponentially worse. But the billionaire mouthpieces gave everyone a shiny new inconsequential talking point and no one cares about anything that matters.
Maybe that's what they wanted all along.
Why fight a war against class, against oppression when we can sit on a chair and write a comment either defending or arguing against something as petty as religion.
It would be maybe the 3rd point worth discussing definitely after concentration of power & how they can influence our opinion of the masses.
But people made it the first.
There is no such thing as a moral billionaire imo, I saw a video like this and I sorta agree.
I wouldn't be comfortable with anyone owning this much amount of control.
Religion seems so petty to me yet it seems that the world is coming back to it. Fighting us vs them.
We have all forgotten what the people in 1970's esque dreamed of 2025 etc. (I am a genz but I have seen such videos of people thinking what)
And the funny thing is, is that we ourselves have forgotten how to dream of what will happen in 2100
Do we really want to grow old in society where even after 70-80 years, one of our children or grandchildren sees yet again some comment like this and writes something like this that I am writing?
I feel a little frustrated.
There are tiny pockets of this country that assume this is the singular issue that animates everybody, every day, and that it is impossible to believe in both Israel's right to exist and defend itself and the Palestinians' right to not be bombed because the Israeli PM doesn't want to go to jail.
Whenever we take a stance, We identify our ego with that stance. We shall die but die a pro X or pro Y
As such many debates happen in bad faith as well.
Of course everyone has their agenda but one has to understand that agenda is just a framework for understanding the world.
And we need to understand the world because it has no inherent meaning.
So like, if we really have to deduce meaning, if we really have to be pro something that we can die on a hill towards, I'd rather have it be a humanitarian thing.
I am not saying that palestine is good either but rather that in genocide/wars, the people fighting the war/military/families displaced suffer, not the old man causing the war.
I feel like I am a humanist. Wishing to understand the world, yet I feel like some people in this world have hurt me so much that sometimes I just wish the world to burn.
I am sure that people are gonna comment on something like "oh do you support a genocide etc."
But I am trying to make the point that the world should really be just anti suffering,accepting. Yes I am naive but surely with all of this technological improvements, we can improve the structure of society to not be fucking brewing with hate and bullying and resentment.
We can do so much better as a society without even trying much. Just small acts of kindness and basically creating a environment that rewards it and punishes bullying/hate speech etc. might be really nice if I am being honest.
Not sure why we can't be pro this instead of defining ourselves with the confict of two other foreign nations
Ellison read and responded to the political situation more skilfully than Elon.
He used Stargate to cement himself as a power broker in AI. He used that influence to provide antitrust assurances that gave his son a leg up for Paramount. Meanwhile he used that proximity to media to get a foot in the door with TikTok.
The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy. This is a project all the major Trump donors and high-level supporters contributed to. That Ellison is coming up as one of the new aristocrats is closer to a dice roll; that we have oligarchs, now, is very much by design.
In this case using the state to choose which business is viable, no doubt being businesses that play ball with the party.
-its why sectarian conflicts and power delegation is so high stakes in many parts of the world.
> The root cause is the partisan politicisation of the economy.
well, tbf in the old days, it was literally called ‘political economy’ for a reason… maybe the name should make a comeback. Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.
When Oracle opened a data-center in Jerusalem, his colleague and CEO Safra Katz had this to say : ...when you connect with Oracle you understand that we are committed to the U.S. and Israel. We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none. This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don't agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren't the right company for them. Larry (Ellison, co-founder of Oracle) and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country and no one should be surprised by that.
"our commitment to Israel is second to none". Does America fall under [none] here? Something to consider when looking at these acquisitions.Though yeah, if they go the Yahoo-route it's going to be a huge waste. But it's really up to how the company handles the acquisition.
Yahoo missed big time by just trying to change the culture of the userbase way too quickly. They didn't like that people were posting porn on Tumblr when that was one of the most important aspects of the platform for the users. They bled way too many users and took way too long of a time to do anything about it.
I feel like Tumblr should have done their own patreon/OF type of push within the platform but they didn't have the vision. They literally had all the creators of that type of content at some point and they've now all moved to X/Twitter.
I hope (i mean, idgaf but you know it's a figure of speech) that Oracle has a better perspective about the issue so they don't commit another billion(s) dollar(s) crime.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-trump-ally-may-soon...
So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh
We won't be so lucky.
If you're not successful you just wasted a ton of time and money.
If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.
Doesn't sound like a country worth investing in anymore.
You still make money in that case. It isn't a bad deal for the chinese. The americans who now have yet another censored app controlled by the american government are the only losers here.
Besides what bluecalm said, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.
Conversely, if TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, American would not have to fear a hostile Chinese government silently gathering data on American users, or a company repeatedly shown to be lying about using its app to do so.
This is the part I'm really curious about : what is the legal framework for mandating a privately-owned company to have a board member designated by the government ?
The closest thing I could imagine is "national" companies (totally or partially owned by the government.) We have plenty of that in France (once in a while the State would nationalize energy utilities, banks, car makers, etc... then make them private again, then buy x% of them, etc, etc...)
In this case I completely understand that the "State" wants their say in the board - they have money in the game.
But here, it does not seem like the US are part of the new ownership (or did I miss that ?)
So, what happens when the next government nominates a board member that Elison dislikes ? On which law would a judge rule ?
US users are today 21 of the 49 TikTok accounts with the most followers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...> (not including TikTok itself). When the Trump administration came close to forcing a divestment/shutdown on TikTok in 2020,[1] Americans were 10% of TikTok's user base but 50% of revenue.
[1] And boy, do Democrats who shouted Orange Man Bad back then now wish they had supported the move
Unlike most nationalizations though in this case the company will be compensated: the new US entity will pay ByteDance licensing fees.
The U.S Steel deal included three board seats, but the Intel deal did not include any.
This is starting to look like the way China does things, with the central government having a financial stake in important companies.
Trump has essentially selected all of the board members. Its not a coincidence that Larry Ellison and Andreessen are big Trump supporters. The amazing corruption continues.
Chinese government won't prosecute me. US government might.
The State Department also said it would crack down on non-citizens who have made posts making light of the shooting.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on Thursday. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.” [0]
Americans prefer that Tiktok data lives within the jurisdiction of the US government, why? If you don't think Palantir is putting together a centralized database to survey individual Americans for the US government, you are crazy. There will be real consequences where if they don't like what you're saying or doing, they will come after you some how.
I'd much rather have my data based in China.[0]https://time.com/7316628/charlie-kirk-death-celebrations-soc...
It's arguments like this that reminds of the critique of libertarians as akin to house cats that seek to undermine the very systems that allow them to exist in the first place that wouldn't survive outside for minute. Or maybe it's just agitprop right here.
All it takes is a minor rebranding and half the country or more would immediately sign up for it. For all intents and purposes, socialism just means “the people we don’t like”. As long as people feel like they’ll get theirs, I seriously doubt they care what economic system they’re living under.
Oracle: "Your phone has 6-cores and our minimum plan is 64 cores. Additionally, we see you upgraded from an iPhone 16 to the 17. Licenses don't transfer, of course. You owe us 3 kidneys."
I'm hopeful. With any luck they'll ruin TikTok and it will die, a satisfying result.
It's bad everywhere, but I found TikTok to be the absolute worst. Not even just fake news political stuff where I can guess the motivation (still bad), but just basic everyday tips and tricks, local users describing news events. I've found it to be so much worse on tiktok.
Other platforms there seems to be "more" intent by creators to provide somewhat consistent / factual content. Tiktok often feels to me like content accuracy / quality isn't a concern for most creators.
YouTube shorts gets all the hate, but I find the content to consistently be the most sophisticated? PG rated? educational?
It would've been better for the mental health of our country if it had been banned (along with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts).
American media is one of the most thightly controlled and censored in the world. They need to carefully control the media to maintain the ilusion of "moral superiority" that is used to justify foreign interventions.
The question is more about whether it is an intentional decision to go this route or a built-in, institutional decision. When faced with the foe of consumer data harvesting and tracking, right now it seems the US government has concluded the answer is that it is better to have an American company spy on people rather than a Chinese one.
The best answer would be to enact laws to stop the act of spying on people, but that’s anathema to US political culture right now!
They'll then rewrite TikTok in Java, and migrate to Oracle Database.
Both are not compatible with each other in any way, but they are in a great deal, one they can't say no to.
This is where either one fails or sometimes both.
Not to mention that this is all just a distraction from the very real destruction Trump 2.0 is doing to peoples' lives, safety, financial outlooks, rights, etc and flushing our country and planet down to the toilet for his benefit
*edited for clarity and fixed typos
10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook [0]
The Fascists’ Playbook [1]
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-small-steps-executing-the-...
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/08/the-fascists-playboo...
IIUC, Oracle has strong connections to the CIA, and Andreessen the person lately seems right-wing activist.
1. Under the current administration, maybe it doesn't much matter that there's a government monitor?
2. But if a more left-wing administration comes back into power, then a government appointee there could help moderate the other influences?
I don't know whether they'll be blocked on the web.
Regardless of who is in control, Tiktok is basically an app designed by some of the smartest minds in the world to get you addicted. I already observed the brainrot similar apps caused to my parents, and for hell I won't allow my kid to touch it whenever I have control.
Whether you "learned" anything from it is irrelevant too -- you can always learn better with books, classes, and heck even YouTube videos are better sources of knowledge these days.
If everyone around your kids is brainrotted or subject to destructive propaganda, your kids suffer too.
But… but… TokTok put full-page ads in all the big newspapers telling us that thanks to them, a yoga mom in Montana can now take her free-range artisanal oat milk candle-making side-hustle and turn it into a full-time job, paying just a little over minimum wage!
Isn't that worth destroying the minds of millions of American children?
I've never used it, but since YouTube introduced Shorts I've become victim to the addiction and subsequently blocked any trace of Shorts with a browser extension.
Given the complexity of forced platform migrations (user data transfer, algorithm preservation, creator monetization continuity), and the technical/legal hurdles involved, I suspect we're seeing opening moves in a broader negotiation rather than a final outcome.
Let's all be patient and wait to see how this plays out before assuming users will actually have to migrate to a completely new app with new ownership.
Example: Silver Lake. Many younger HNers may not be that familira with the story of Skype. To summarize, Skype was a big deal, the first real mass market caller-to-caller Internet voice messaging services. It was founded in 2003, bought by eBay (of all people) in 2005 for several billion dollars. There were plans to spin it out on an IPO but Silver Lake led a buyout for less than eBay paid for it I believe in 2009 (~$2.75 billion).
Now in 2011, Microsoft bought it for ~$8.5 billion. That was great for the employees, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. I believe the new company was incorporated in the Cayman Islands to make it difficult to sue, a bunch of executives were fired before the buyout to avoid paying them out and, most controversially, the options had a clawback option that allowed Silver Lake to forcibly purchase options at the original rather than the buyout price [1].
Larry Ellison is more well known in HN circles as comically evil. Pretty much everything he touches leaves a Grand Moff Tarkin level of stench of evil from his attack on public access to Carbon Beach through his massive property portfolio to his more well known attacks on open source (originally as a threat to Oracle's dominance).
He is a Trump loyalist and true Putinesque oligarch who will probably amass levels of media control well beyond Rupert Murdoch's wildest dreams. You can bet your bottom dollar that every media property he touches will serve the administration and I'd be shocked if one or more of these deals doesn't directly enrich Trump and/or his family.
Welcome to the tleptocracy.
nice
The Constitution has the worth of toilet paper if the executive can just keep saying "I don't want to enforce this law because my buddy here has a financial interest in that not happening as its supposed to", which is exactly what is happening given how close Larry and Trump are.
That’s something you see in Russia, not America.
The exact same post with the exact same title can either be completely ignored with no comments and no upvotes or be the top post with 500 upvotes and 300 comments.
Sometimes we re-up things for that reason (basically the second-chance pool mechanism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). I've done that with this one.
Plus, Ellison on surveillance tech: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,”
https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveill...
Why do they need to control the media?
We are truly looking at 1984 as a blueprint not a warning.
Larry's son buys Paramount (CBS) and promptly fires Stephen Colbert, a money making machine who was leading his timeslot as what was, in hindsight, a clear message to everyone that nobody is safe if they don't fall in line.
Larry now gets TikTok, which like it or not is the most influential social media platform among today's youth.
Both are Trump fanatics. This is the next stage in the Ailes playbook that has already gone too far in ruining the American experiment.
Unfortunately not: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/business/media/stephen-co...
(which has a clearer title that's not that much different than days ago news: U.S. Investors, Trump Close In on TikTok Deal With China)
However, TikTok is still a brain rot slop machine and we would be right to question Ellison's motivations.
As a reminder, TikTok forces staff to sign pledges to support China’s political system in order to work there and get stock awards:
https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
Too popular to ban. Political constraints.
>Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok?
"An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data."
________________
I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way though. This isn't some conclusion of a search for the optimal way to address the situation (which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework). The ban couldn't go through because the app was too popular and Trump liked the attention he was getting on it. So if the ban has to be backed out of, what's the second best option? A "deal" of course, from the world's best deal maker. It's no more complicated than that.
The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.
“America” is an abstraction. It gets the people who will own the new entity something, and its gets the government decisionmakers something, and that’s, in practice, more important than what it gets “America”.