Since 2019, TikTok has come under US attention due to worries that Chinese entities could utilise the information of those users for espionage or other illegal activities.

According to Stewart Baker, a national security attorney with Steptoe & Johnson LLP, 'They constructed the complete infrastructure in China.' When something goes wrong, there will eventually only be one engineer who understands how to fix it, unless they spend a lot of money rebuilding the system in the United States. And it's likely that they are in China.

Interviews with former national security officials, attorneys who have handled comparable transactions, and specialists in data security, social media platforms, and telecommunications corporations served as the basis for our study of the arrangement.

There are no signs that a choice has been made.

While the firm would not comment on the specifics of its negotiations with the US government, a spokesperson for TikTok named Brooke Oberwetter stated, 'We are confident that we are on a road to fully fulfil all reasonable US national security concerns.'

She also emphasised that although some employees based in China would have access to publicly posted user data, they would not have access to personally identifiable user information. Additionally, their use of publicly posted data, such as videos and comments, would be very restricted and would be accessed under the supervision of the oversight board established by the US government.

All of TikTok's US user traffic is routed through servers run by Oracle Corp., and the database behemoth is checking the app's algorithms.

No matter how solid a deal appears on paper, the experts said, new controls on how US user data is held and accessed will be required and may not completely allay US security concerns.

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, holds the same opinion.

He acknowledged hearing the talks on TikTok but declined to elaborate. But he acknowledged that the business has 'a large mountain to climb with me to make the case that it can actually be safe.'

Warner claimed that China's record of user privacy protection is poor. They have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to establish a surveillance state, which ought to terrify us all to death.

He continued by saying that due to TikTok's increased popularity, it is now much more difficult than it was five or six years ago to properly block the app's data or outright ban it.

The burden of proof that you can actually separate American data must be met, especially if the code is still being built in China.

ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has made efforts to remove itself from Chinese official influence, but President Xi Jinping has launched a broad campaign against private businesses, particularly those in the internet industry.