Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that he is still “very interested” in buying TikTok and suggested that its technology could be rebuilt even if the Chinese government bans the app’s parent company, ByteDance, based in China, to sell the algorithm.
“I’ve actually talked to a lot of technology companies about working to rebuild this,” Mnuchin told Bloomberg Television. “I believe the algorithms could be rebuilt.”
“So my plan, if we bought it, would be to rebuild the technology under US leadership, make sure everything is disconnected from ByteDance going forward, and that it’s very robust and secure,” he said.
The push to buy the popular social media app comes in the wake of a new law, signed by President Biden last month, requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok within about a year or face a ban from online app stores and networks. from the USA.
However, even if ByteDance is willing to sell TikTok, it may not be allowed to sell the algorithm that the app uses.
“The Chinese government has made it very clear that it will not grant an export license for the algorithm, and I understand that,” Mnuchin said. “We have sensitive technology that we don’t want to transfer to them, and they don’t want to transfer it to the US”
The former Treasury secretary also warned Tuesday that the litigation could derail efforts to buy the app and rebuild its technology.
“We think, given the year, it can be rebuilt,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” adding, “But the problem is, if they’re going to pursue litigation and it takes six months, it will inevitably end up with a very short period of time to rebuild the technology.”
TikTok and ByteDance sued Tuesday to block the law, arguing it violates the First Amendment.
He also claimed that “qualified divestment” “is simply not possible: neither commercially, nor technologically, nor legally”, and would lead to the closure of the application in the USA, cutting off millions of daily users.
“The best outcome would be if they agreed to make a deal now and you had a year to rebuild the technology, which I think would be a huge effort, but it could be done,” Mnuchin said.
“But my concern is that if they spend six months litigating and then decide to settle and it’s only six months away, it’s simply going to be impossible to build the technology in that amount of time,” he added.
Mnuchin also suggested that the best approach could be to invest in TikTok to dilute Chinese ownership rather than buying the app.
“I think it’s actually the best way to do it because right now there’s 60% foreign ownership and I think a lot of those investors would like to stay,” he told CNBC. “So it doesn’t have to be a complete sale. It just needs to be disconnected from ByteDance and needs Chinese ownership to stay below 20% to comply with the law.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
