00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, April 26.
00:05 Today on Forbes, TikTok's ban bill nightmare is just beginning.
00:11 On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that will force China-based social
00:16 media giant ByteDance to sell its crown jewel, TikTok.
00:21 If it does not, the app will be banned in the United States.
00:25 An unprecedented move that would be the first instance of this country prohibiting a foreign-owned
00:29 social media app.
00:32 Biden and the White House have emphasized that banning TikTok is not the intention of
00:36 the legislation, and that instead, they simply want the app to keep operating here under
00:40 a new American owner.
00:42 Case in point?
00:43 The Biden campaign recently joined TikTok and plans to continue using it to reach voters.
00:49 But a consensus is beginning to emerge that unraveling TikTok from ByteDance will be all
00:54 but impossible.
00:56 News reporting on the platform, used by 170 million Americans, has also repeatedly shown
01:01 just how entangled the two companies are, with much of TikTok running today on ByteDance
01:07 tools, that is, its own versions of Microsoft Office, G Suite, Salesforce and the like,
01:12 built years ago by engineers in China.
01:15 That has given staff at both companies, across the U.S. and China, broad access to sensitive
01:20 information about American TikTok users, TikTok creators, TikTok advertisers and celebrities,
01:26 politicians and other public figures on the app.
01:29 Employees, too, have described extensive overlap between the companies.
01:34 Former TikTok employee Joel Carter, who says he was wrongfully terminated in August, told
01:39 Forbes, "I will say that no mistake that ByteDance and TikTok are one and the same.
01:44 It is clear from your first day, through office documents, products, systems, processes, office
01:50 signage and even your paycheck, that individuals are ByteDance employees."
01:56 And the argument that the new law is not, in fact, about a divestiture, is one that
02:00 TikTok has been making all along.
02:03 In a viral video posted to the platform after Biden signed the law Wednesday, TikTok CEO
02:08 Shou Chu said, "Make no mistake.
02:11 This is a ban.
02:12 A ban on TikTok.
02:13 And a ban on you and your voice.
02:16 Politicians may say otherwise, but don't get confused.
02:19 Many who sponsored the bill admit a TikTok ban is their ultimate goal."
02:24 The passage of the law targeting TikTok, which was tacked onto a broader package providing
02:29 foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, is the close of one chapter, but the start
02:35 of the next.
02:36 What is likely to be a protracted legal battle over the future of the wildly popular app.
02:42 Michael Beckerman, TikTok's top policy leader for the Americas, wrote to staff last week
02:47 in an internal memo obtained by Forbes, "This is the beginning, not the end of this long
02:52 process."
02:53 He called the bill "unconstitutional" and "unprecedented."
02:58 He added, "We'll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the First
03:04 Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok and would have devastating consequences
03:09 for the 7 million small businesses that use TikTok to reach new customers, sell their
03:14 products and create new jobs.
03:16 Together, let's do our best to stay composed and focus on the business."
03:22 Former National Security Agency General Counsel Glenn Gerstel said that while China and TikTok
03:27 present potential national security threats, the law passed by the White House and Congress
03:32 is "really bad public policy," likely to land in the crosshairs of the Supreme Court, and
03:38 that the divestiture it demands is "economically unrealistic."
03:43 He told Forbes, "There's no way to take the U.S. piece out of TikTok and sell it to someone.
03:49 China is never going to allow the algorithms that make TikTok what it is, the sophisticated
03:54 app that became the world's most popular app in just two years, to have a new non-Chinese
03:59 owner, which would then completely kill the value of the rest of it.
04:03 There's no world in which this makes economic sense, and no one's going to buy a TikTok
04:07 in the U.S. that doesn't have the algorithm."
04:10 He added, "The very thing that makes it valuable is exactly that which is not for sale."
04:17 For full coverage, check out Alexandra S. Levine and Emily Baker White's piece on Forbes.com.
04:24 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:26 Thanks for tuning in.
04:27 [music]
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