TikTok is trying to negotiate an agreement with our government that would allow it to continue operations within our nation.

TikTok has been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an interagency government panel, for more than two years on a way to wall off the company’s data and operations from the Chinese government.

The article’s headline, though, correctly identifies what should be the deal-breaking factor:

TikTok’s Talks With US Have an Unofficial Player: China

The China in question is the People’s Republic of China.

TikTok is a wholly owned subsidiary of ByteDance. ByteDance is a company domiciled in the PRC. The PRC has a 2017 National Intelligence Law that makes all PRC-domiciled companies beholden to the PRC intelligence community for any and all intelligence-gathering and reporting tasks the intel community might choose to levy on the company. That makes TikTok a potential espionage facility operating for the PRC within our nation.

There shouldn’t be any negotiation at all regarding TikTok: there’s nothing to discuss. The “unofficial player” isn’t hidden at all; it’s the PRC with its intelligence-gathering imperative.