A deal for TikTok is in the offing, but it’s wholly insufficient in my not very humble opinion. The deal breaker for me:

Under the agreement, a new entity would be created to run TikTok in the US. A consortium of new investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle would own roughly half. Existing investors such as trading firm Susquehanna International would hold about 30%. TikTok parent ByteDance‘s stake would dip below 20% to comply with a 2024 law requiring the company to do a deal or stop operating in the US.

ByteDance is domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and so it is subject to the PRC’s national intelligence laws. One of those laws requires PRC companies to answer intelligence community requests for information about its doings in other nations and about the doings of enterprises and individuals in those other nations that do business with ByteDance and those associated with it, and to go get that information—commit espionage—if it doesn’t have it already.

ByteDance‘s under 20% participation in the new TikTok entity might coincide with the American law, but it still leaves the PRC company, and so the PRC government, with too broad a window into American private affairs. Any window, of any size, is too much.