GAI Director of Research Seamus Bruner says that some of TikTok’s potential buyers may not be a whole lot better than if the company just stayed with China-based company ByteDance.
Oracle, Microsoft, and even popular YouTuber Mr. Beast are all said to be in the hunt.
The question: Will TikTok be any safer in the hands of global billionaires who love China anyway?
“Bill Gates, he is absolutely in bed with China,” Bruner says. “So it’s not a whole lot better. But I guess he is an American. He is the front-runner.”
Bruner continued: “These tech guys, they have such huge business dealings with China. And we know that in the past, Microsoft has caved to CCP demands. They’ve even outed some of the dissident journalists who were using Skype and other Microsoft products. Microsoft tailored their software to work with the CCP for all
sorts of censorship and firewall purposes.”
“So it’s not a whole lot better,” Bruner added. “But this would be seen as a major victory for Trump if he’s able to get around this TikTok ban by having an American company either go 50/50 or take a full majority stake.”
Watch Bruner’s analysis above.
President Trump signed an order on Monday to create a U.S. sovereign wealth fund and discussed possibly eyeing a TikTok purchase.
“It’s a very exciting event. We’re going to have a sovereign wealth fund, which we’ve never had,” the president said. “We have a lot of things that create wealth and you’re seeing that over the last two weeks, I think we’ve created more wealth.”
“TikTok — we’re going to be doing something, perhaps, with TikTok, and perhaps not, if we make the right deal we’ll do it, otherwise we won’t, but I have the right to do that,” Trump said. “And we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever will make. Or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people. A lot of options, but we could put that as an example of the fund.”
Watch the clip below:
🚨 WATCH: President Donald J. Trump signs an Executive Order creating America’s first Sovereign Wealth Fund. pic.twitter.com/FuD4mGDMm0
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 3, 2025