Staff Reports
The latest reporting from Politico makes one thing clear: the January divestiture that was supposed to cut TikTok’s U.S. ties to ByteDance looks more like a name change than a real firewall. Nearly a year after TikTok USDS Joint Venture was spun off, U.S. staff still use ByteDance-built systems like Lark and an AI assistant called Aime. That is the new development, and it deserves blunt scrutiny.
What Politico found — the troubling new details
Politico dug up interviews and internal materials showing U.S. employees still rely on Lark (also called Feishu) for daily work and on Aime for AI help. The joint venture says Oracle’s U.S. cloud stores American user data and that the recommendation algorithm will be retrained on U.S. data. But reporters could not confirm whether the algorithm code or model maintenance still sits with ByteDance engineers, or who controls the admin keys and logs for Lark.
Why this matters: ownership does not equal security
Congress forced a divestiture because the idea of a Chinese company running an app used by 200 million Americans unnerved lawmakers. But handing ownership to a new U.S. shell while leaving in place the very tools and practices from ByteDance is a half-measure. The Justice Department already accused employees of moving “significant amounts” of restricted U.S. user data through Lark. A $400 million settlement over children’s privacy and state suits about addictive design prove the legal risk is real. We were promised a fix. Instead, we got a cosmetic surgery with the same surgeon.
What regulators and Congress should demand next
If this is to be a real fix, lawmakers and regulators must stop taking press releases at face value. Demand a full, independent forensic audit that proves where source code and model weights live, who can change them, and who has admin access to internal chat tenants. Require production of audit logs and proof that Aime’s data and logs reside only inside Oracle’s U.S. cloud with U.S.-based admin controls. If TikTok USDS and Adam Presser want public trust, release the receipts. No more slogans about “defined safeguards” — show the chain of custody.
Bottom line: trust but verify — and don’t wait
Americans deserve a clear answer: is TikTok’s U.S. service truly separated from ByteDance, or did the old company just leave the keys in the same lock? This is not a technical debate for wonks alone. It is about user privacy, national security, and whether the government can enforce meaningful rules. Congress, the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general — including Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. and Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday — should keep the pressure on until we see hard proof, not PR. Until then, treat every promised safeguard like a politely worded excuse until proven otherwise.
