Top Highlights

• TikTok and WeChat, two hugely successful Chinese social media applications that have gained global popularity, abruptly find their access to the U.S. consumer market at risk.
• President Donald Trump ordered TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell its product to a U.S. company within 90 days. He simultaneously banned Tencent, the owner of WeChat, from most of its operations in the United States.
• The Trump administration sees malicious uses underlying dependence on both apps.
• According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, utilizing Chinese social media tools leaves massive amounts of personal data vulnerable to exploitation by Chinese intelligence, though both parent companies deny these allegations.
• The U.S. claims that dangers to U.S. national security justify efforts to disconnect Chinese carriers from America’s telecommunications networks

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