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The white dome of Boudhanath rises like a silent guardian over the chaotic sprawl of Nepals capital, Kathmandu, crowned by a golden spire that pierces the sky. Painted on each of the spires four sides are the benevolent eyes of the Buddha wide, calm, and unblinking said to see all that unfolds below. Those eyes have served as a symbol of sanctuary for generations of Tibetans fleeing the Chinese crackdown in their homeland. But today, Tibetan refugees are also watched by far more malevolent eyes: Thousands of CCTV cameras from China, perched on street corners and rooftops to monitor every movement below. This intense surveillance has stifled the once-vibrant Free Tibet movement that had resonated around the world. Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of Chinas push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control. The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy, or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijings demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today. For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Departments Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions. AWS told AP it adheres to ethical codes of conduct, complies with U.S. law, and does not itself offer surveillance infrastructure. Dahua said they conduct due diligence to prevent abuse of their products. Hikvision said the same, and that they categorically reject any suggestion that the company is involved in or complicit in repression. Chinese technology firms now offer a complete suite of telecommunications, surveillance, and digital infrastructure, with few restrictions on who they sell to or how theyre used. China pitches itself as a global security model with low crime rates, contrasting its record with the United States, said Sheena Greitens, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Its got a set of solutions that its happy to share with the world that nobody else can offer, she said. (But) theyre certainly exporting the tools and techniques that are very important to authoritarian rule. The AP investigation was based on thousands of Nepali government procurement documents, corporate marketing material, leaked government and corporate documents, and interviews with more than 40 people, including Tibetan refugees and Nepali, American, and Chinese engineers, executives, experts and officials. While thousands of Tibetans once fled to Nepal every year, the number is now down to the single digits, according to Tibetan officials in Nepal. In a statement to AP, the Tibetan government in exile cited tight border controls, Nepals warming ties with China and unprecedented surveillance as reasons for the drastic plunge. A 2021 internal Nepali government report, obtained by AP, revealed that China has even built surveillance systems within Nepal and in some areas of the border buffer zone where construction is banned by bilateral agreements. In a statement to AP, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied coercing Western companies to hand over technology or working with Nepal to surveil Tibetans, calling it a sheer fabrication driven by ulterior motives.” Attempts to use Tibet-related issues to interfere in Chinas internal affairs, smear Chinas image, and poison the atmosphere of China-Nepal cooperation will never succeed, the statement said. The Nepali government and the Chinese-controlled Tibetan authorities did not respond to requests for comment. Under pressure, many Tibetans are responding the only way they can: Leaving. The Tibetan population in Nepal has plunged from over 20,000 to half that or less today. Former activist Sonam Tashi gave up protesting years ago. Now 49, today he’s just a father trying to get his 10-year-old son out before the net pulls tighter. The boy was born in Nepal but has no document proving he is either a refugee or a citizen, a result of Chinese pressure. Tashi described how those considered likely to protest are picked up in advance around key dates like March 10, which marks the 1959 Tibetan uprising, or July 6, the Dalai Lamas birthday. In 2018, Nepal’s police magazine confirmed that it was building predictive policing, which allows officers to watch peoples movements, identify in advance who they think will protest, and arrest them preemptively. There are cameras everywhere, Tashi said, sitting on a bus winding toward the Indian border. There is no future. They gave us all the hardware After China crushed a Tibetan uprising in 1959, thousands fled across the Himalayas to Nepal, carrying only what they could: Religious paintings, prayer wheels, and the weight of families left behind. Their exodus, led by the charismatic Dalai Lama, captured the American imagination, with Hollywood films and actor Richard Geres congressional appeals putting Tibet in the spotlight. Washington trod a careful line, defending the rights and religious freedom of Tibetans without recognizing independence. Today, the future of the Free Tibet movement is in question. Without refugee cards that grant basic rights, Tibetans in Nepal can no longer open bank accounts, work legally, or leave the country. Cameras are now everywhere in Kathmandu, perched on traffic lights and swiveling from temple eaves. Most link back to a four-story brick building just a few blocks down from the Chinese embassy, where officers watch the country in real time. The building hums with the low breath of cooling fans. Inside, a wall of monitors blinks with feeds from border towns, busy mrkets and clogged traffic crossings. Officers in crisp blue uniforms and red caps sit in the glow, scanning scenes. Beneath the screens, a photo published in a Nepali daily shows, a sign in English and Chinese reads: With the compliments of the Ministry of Public Security of China. Their reach is vast. Operators can track a motorbike weaving through the capital, follow a protest as it forms, or patch an alert directly to patrol radios. Many cameras are equipped with night vision facial recognition and AI tracking able to pick a single face out of a festival crowd or lock onto a figure until it disappears indoors. The system not only sees but is learning to remember, storing patterns of movement, building a record of lives lived under its gaze. A 34-year-old Tibetan cafe owner in the city watched the city change in quiet horror. Now you can only be Tibetan in private, he said. He and other Tibetans in Nepal spoke to AP anonymously, fearing retaliation. The first cameras in Boudhanath were installed in 2012, officially to deter crime. But after a Tibetan monk doused himself in petrol and set himself ablaze in front of the stupa in 2013, police added 35 night vision cameras around it. The Chinese embassy in Kathmandu worked closely with the police, said Rupak Shrestha, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who studied surveillance in Nepal. He said the police received special training to use the new cameras, identify potential symbols associated with the Free Tibet movement, and anticipate dissent. In 2013, a team of Nepal Police officers crossed the northern border into Tibet for a seemingly straightforward mission: Collect police radios from Chinese authorities in Zhangmu, a remote border town, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Kathmandu. A truck was loaded with equipment and a few handshakes later, they were driving back to Kathmandu. The radios made by the partly state-owned Chinese firm Hytera looked like walkie-talkies but ran on a digital trunking system, a scaled-down mobile network for police use. Officers could talk privately, coordinate across districts, even patch into public phone lines. The entire system radios, relay towers, software was a $5.5 million gift from China. They didnt give us the money, recalled a retired Nepali officer who made the trip. They gave all the hardware. All Chinese. He remembered not the border guards but the tech sleek, reliable, and far ahead of anything theyd used before. He spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions. He said Nepal had initially considered buying the technology from the U.S. and only wanted to deploy the system in its two biggest cities. Hytera was a fraction of the cost and performed comparably, but China also wanted coverage near the border with Tibet. Nepal acquiesced. They installed the technology in Sindhupalchowk, a border district with a key road to China used by Tibetan refugees. We understood their mindset, the retired officer said. A secure border. A police envoy from the Chinese embassy began making regular visits to the Nepal Police headquarters. Hed chat over coffee, flip through brochures from Chinese companies. Hed say, You want anything? the retired officer recalled. China began donating tens of millions in police aid and surveillance equipment, including a new school for Nepals Armed Police Force. Hundreds of Nepali police traveled to China for training on policing and border control, according to Chinese government posts. Ahead of a summit of South Asian leaders in 2014, among the goods on offer were ones from Uniview, Chinas pitch for an all-seeing eye. The company was the Chinese surveillance business of what was then Hewlett Packard, or HP, before it was spun off in a 2011 deal. Since 2012, Uniview has been selling mass surveillance solutions to the Tibetan police, such as a command center, and developed cameras that track ethnicities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans. Uniview installed cameras in Kathmandu for Nepals first safe city project in 2016. It started with the citys roads, then went up across the capital in tourist areas, religious sites, high-security zones like Parliament and the prime ministers home. The cameras didnt just record. Some could follow people automatically as they moved. Others were designed to use less data, making it easier to store and review footage. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a successor company to HP that sells security solutions, has no ownership in Uniview and declined to comment. Hytera and Uniview did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly all the cameras installed in Nepal are now made by Chinese companies like Hikvision, Dahua, and Uniview, and many come bundled with facial recognition and AI tracking software. Hikvision’s website and marketing materials advertise camera systems in Nepal linked via Hik-Connect and HikCentral Connect, cloud products that rely on Amazon Web Services. Hikvision sells to the Nepali police and government, and a template for Nepali tenders indicates CCTV cameras procured for the government are required to support Hik-Connect. In return for Beijings support, top Nepali officials have thanked China repeatedly over the years, promising never to allow anti-China activities on Nepali territory. The Nepali police head offices arent far from the now-forlorn Tibetan reception center, which used to shelter tired, hungry Tibetans fleeing across the border. The building is nearly empty. The gates are locked. Those who do escape, like Namkyi, arrested at 15 for protesting Chinese rule, often have to wait for weeks confined indoors until theyre smuggled out again to the Tibetan capital in exile in India. Silence has become survival. They know they are being watched, she said. Even though we are free, the surveillance cameras mean were actually living in a big prison. From clients to competitors From the start, U.S. companies eager for Chinas vast markets exchanged technology for enry. Many were required to start joint ventures and research operations in China as a precondition for being allowed in. Dozens, if not hundreds, complied, transferring valuable know-how and expertise even in sensitive areas like encryption or policing. Little by little, Chinese companies chipped away at the lead of American tech companies by luring talent, obtaining research, and sometimes plain copying their hardware and software. The flow of technology continued, even as U.S. officials openly accused China of economic espionage and pressuring American companies for their technology. China is by far the most egregious actor when it comes to forced technology transfer, Robert D. Atkinson, then-president of a think tank focused on innovation, warned Congress in a 2012 hearing. American tech resistance came to a final, definitive end later that year with Edward Snowdens revelations that U.S. intelligence was exploiting American technology to spy on Beijing. Spooked, the Chinese government told Western firms they risked being kicked out unless they handed over their technology and provided security guarantees. After companies like HP and IBM agreed, their former partners became their fiercest global competitors and unlike American firms, they faced few questions about the way their technology was being used. Companies like Huawei, Hikvision, and Dahua have now become global behemoths that sell surveillance systems and gear all over the world. American technology was key to this: – Uniview, the Chinese AI-powered CCTV camera supplier, supplied the first phase of Nepals safe city project in 2016, installing cameras in Kathmandu. Uniview was carved out of California-based HPs China surveillance video business. – Hytera provided data infrastructure for the Nepali police, such as walkie-talkies and digital trunking technology, which enables real-time communication. Earlier this year, Hytera acknowledged stealing technology from U.S. company Motorola in a plea agreement, and had acquired German, British, Spanish, and American tech businesses in their growth phase. – Hikvision and Dahua, Chinas two largest surveillance camera suppliers, sell many of the cameras now in Nepal. They partnered with Intel and Nvidia to add AI capabilities to surveillance cameras. Those ties ended after U.S. sanctions in 2019, but AWS continues to sell cloud services to both companies, which remains legal under what some lawmakers call a loophole. AWS has advertised to Chinese companies expanding overseas, including at a policing expo in 2023. – Chinese tech giant Huawei has become one of the worlds leading sellers of surveillance systems, wiring more than 200 cities with sensors. In Nepal, they supplied telecom gear and high-capacity servers at an international airport. Over the years, the company benefited from partnerships with American companies like IBM, and has been dogged by allegations of theft including copying code from Cisco routers wholesale, a case which Huawei settled out of court in 2004. Huawei said it provides general-purpose products based on recognized industry standards. Intel has said it adheres to all laws and regulations where it operates, and cannot control end use of its products. Nvidia has said it does not make surveillance systems or work with police in China at present. IBM and Cisco declined to comment. Policing gear maker Motorola Solutions, a successor company to Motorola after it split, did not respond to requests for comment. U.S. technology transfer to Chinese firms has mostly stopped after growing controversy and a slew of sanctions in the past decade. But industry insiders say its too late: China, once a tech backwater, is now among the biggest exporters of surveillance technologies on earth. Few realized the U.S. shouldnt be selling the software to China because they might copy it, they might use it for these types of surveillance and bad stuff, said Charles Mok, a Hong Kong IT entrepreneur and former lawmaker now living in exile as a research scholar at Stanford. Nobody was quick enough to realize this could happen. The great big eye in the sky Inside a 15th-century monastery in Lo Manthang in Nepals Mustang district, light slants through wooden slats, catching motes of dust and the faded faces of bodhisattvas. Crumpled notes of Chinese currency lie at the feet of deities in the walled city along the Tibetan border. Here, shops stock Chinese instant noodles and cars with Chinese plates rumble down mountain roads. A gleaming white observation dome just inside Chinese territory looms over the city. Visible from 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, its trained on the district that has long been a refuge for Tibetans, including a guerrilla base in the 1960s. The dome is just one node in Chinas vast 1,389-kilometer (863-mile) border network with Nepal a Great Wall of Steel of fences, sensors, and AI-powered drones. Chinese forces have barred ethnic Tibetans from accessing traditional pastures and performing sacred rites. They have pressured residents of Lo Manthang to remove photos of the Dalai Lama from shops. And a China-Nepal joint command mechanism meets several times a month on border patrols and repatriations, according to a post by the Chinese-run Tibetan government. The result is that the once-porous frontier is now effectively sealed, and Chinas digital dragnet reaches deep into the lives of those who live near it. In April 2024, Rapke Lama was chatting with a friend across the border on WeChat when he received an invitation to meet. He set out from his village and crossed into Tibet only to be arrested almost immediately. Lama believes his WeChat exchange was monitored; Chinese police appeared with unsettling precision, as if they knew where to look. After accusing him wrongly, he maintains of helping Tibetans flee into Nepal, the police seized his phone, which had photos of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan music. Then came months in a Lhasa prison, where isolation and inadequate medical care hollowed him out. Lama did not return to Npal until May 2025, gaunt and shaken. He later said he entered Tibet to harvest caterpillar fungus, valued in traditional Chinese medicine. Another friend who crossed the border remains in custody. Even now, Im scared, Lama says. He wears masks when wandering the streets, he says, because of that lingering fear. The Chinese observation dome is a giant symbol of the same fear, towering over the border. Its the great big eye in the sky, said a 73-year-old Tibetan hotel owner in Nepal, who spotted the installation during a trip near the border last year. For Tibetan refugees, Nepal has become a second China. __ Associated Press journalists Niranjan Shrestha and Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Manish Swarup and Rishi Lekhi in New Delhi, Ashwini Bhatia in Dharamshala, India, and David Goldman in Washington contributed to this report. Aniruddha Ghosal and Dake Kang, Associated Press
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Just when you think youve wrapped your mind around computers that can put your dog in front of the Eiffel Tower or chatbots that act like your best friend (or lover), the AI behemoths surprise you with a fully AI-powered TikTok or the ability to virtually bring back your dead relatives. Ive worked in the AI space for 15 years. I served as an early beta tester for OpenAI in 2020, when I predicted that a little model called GPT-3 had world-changing potential. It was later released as something called ChatGPTperhaps youve heard of it? Ive also called several big AI trends correctly, including the rise of video generators and the AI Wars between Google and OpenAI. Based on my experience, here are my six AI predictions for 2026 and beyond. 1. OpenAI goes garlic In late 2025, Googles Gemini model started to gain ground on OpenAI and its GPT-5.1 system. That apparently really irked Sam Altman and the OpenAI team. Altman reportedly called a code red, directing staff to focus all their efforts on besting Google. Rumor had it they were developing a new, fully re-trained thinking model, codenamed Garlic. When OpenAI did a surprise drop of a new GPT-5.2 model in mid December, lots of people thought it might be Garlic coming to market. Based on my own testing, its not. Or at least, its not the complete model. GPT-5.2 is indeed better than the previous model. Its faster and more efficient, and makes fewer errors. Its also notably better at scientific tasks, and practical ones like coding. But now it appears there will be a second new OpenAI release, which I expect to come out in January. Thats most likely the full Garlic model. This new model, I predict, will have a new knowledge cutoff sometime in 2025, a broader context window, and much better image generation capabilities. It will also be faster and more efficient to run, especially on thinking tasks. 2. Googles Gemini continues its march toward domination Whenever it finally arrives, Garlic will enter the world with plenty of competition. Google was very slow to roll up to the generative AI table. For a company thats been working in deep learning for decades and has some of the most intelligent people in the world working for it, that felt like a big miss. Google had reportedly developed its own ChatGPT years before OpenAI, but chickened out on releasing it. In the beginning of the AI race, that allowed OpenAI to very loudly and publicly eat Googles lunch. The history of science, though, is littered with examples where early innovators werent the ones who successfully commercialized a new technology. Just ask Joseph Swan, the true inventor of the lightbulb. Youve never heard of him. But you do know Thomas Edison, who made the lightbulb a widely available technologyand did a great job promoting his invention (and himself) in the process. Historically, first-mover advantage has proven surprisingly inconsequential in the tech space. And now that Google has woken up to the importance of AI, theyre aggressively building out their Gemini model and integrating it into almost all their products, including their core search experience. Google has more data, more resources (including its own custom AI chips), more people, and a much broader reach than OpenAI. In 2026, Google will continue to throw its weight around in generative AI. Gemini will go from being an also-ran to one of the most powerful models on the market. Because it will be broadly integrated into products that normal people use on a day-to-day basis, it will immediately have an audience in the billions. The struggle now isnt for newer companies like OpenAI to create the best product. Its to create a product better than Googles. That will be very hard in 2026 and beyond. 3. Chatbots become therapy (and a bit more) Users have already realized that ChatGPT can take the place of a human therapist. In a recent poll by the Economist, 25% of people reported turning to chatbots for mental health support. As cases of AI psychosis and alleged suicides demonstrate, this can go very badly. But for people who cant afford any kind of psychological supportor simply dont have access to it in their language or countryusing chatbots as cheap therapists is incredibly appealing. Without directly saying so, OpenAI has implied that theyre moving ChatGPT further into this space, with improvements to how the bot handles sensitive medical and mental health conversations. This could be a huge boon for mental health. Many people appear more comfortable discussing their problems with an unthinking bot than with a human. The fact that a session with ChatGPT doesnt cost $300 per hour is also a big plus! ChatGPTs capabilities will expand in other ways, too. A rumored adult mode will arrive in 2026, allowing ChatGPT to write risqué material. Prepare yourself for a wave of frenzied op-eds about how people are turning to these newly salacious for relationships instead of fellow humans. 4. AI-generated videos take overand not just on Sora OpenAIs AI-powered Sora video generator is incredibly powerful, and their Sora-based social network is incredibly fun to us. In 2026 and beyond, expect to see the reach and importance of AI-generated vertical video accelerate. Vertical video is the perfect format for AI. The clips tend to be short, which caters to AIs ability to generate about 10 seconds of reliable video before things go off the rails. They also tend to be grabby and compelling. Again, AI excels at making videos of things like people falling into wedding cakes or having heated arguments with their roommates. In 2026, expect the reach of AI-powered social networks like Sora to grow dramatically. The biggest growth, though, will come from these videos migrating off the Sora platform and onto other social media. Already, my Facebook Reels feed is dominated by clearly AI-generated videos of things like a cat saving her kittens from a flood or grandmothers fighting grizzly bears. In 2026, AI videos wont stay put. Theyll travel into every vertical video space on the webfrom TikTok to Nextdoorfurther blurring the lines between whats real and whats imagined. 5. Electricity becomes the limiting factor I have friends who build data centers for a living. They tell me the only thing stopping them from building more data centers is finding enough electrical power to keep up with AIs demands. Some companies are reportedly even going nuclear, building or recommissioning fully functional reactors to power their electricity-hungry AI chips. The need for more electrical power for AI will start to limit the techs growth in 2026. It will also rub up against societys other needs. In 2026, I expect a populist backlash against the fact that data centers voracious energy demands are raising electricity rates for everyday people. Ultimately, the deficiencies of todays gridstrained as it is by the rise of AIwill drive innovative, new models that are good for everybody. Cheap solar power at midday may be redirected toward data centers, for example, or stored in giant batteries to keep servers running overnight. This demand will create a huge market for green technologies, ultimately benefiting the planet and everyone on it. 6. AI invades the real world No, the robot uprising isnt here just yet. But AI is increasingly invading the real world. Self-driving cars were once a novelty. In 2026, usage will explode, with Zoox, Waymo and their competitorsincluding entrants from Chinaserving more cities. The rise of self-driving vehicles and other physical manifestations of AI technology will surprise people. Youll blink, and one day it will feel like nearly every car on the road is self-drivingas it currently does in my home city of San Francisco. I expect to see other experiments with physical AI in 2026, from robot baristas to caregiving machines, and plenty of military AI tech, too. Again, though, the self-driving car blitz coming in 2026 will be the most profound and surprising (to everyday people, anyway) implementation of the technology. It will arrive far sooner than you think. A pat on the back So thats what I anticipate for the year ahead. As someone whos been in the AI space for a long time, Ive missed some things. But I also wrote, two years before ChatGPT, that OpenAI and its founders could easily make billions (and likely challenge the advertising and content recommendation engines of rivals like Google) by throwing caution to the wind and throwing open the doors to GPT-3 to all comers. I still pat myself on the back for that one. How will my 2026 predictions shape up? Ask me in a year!
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The author of The Art of the Deal always likes to claim hes a big winner when it comes to any business arrangement he makes. And in some ways, Donald Trump appears to have won big by finalizing a deal that will see Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX take part-ownership of a new joint venture designed to oversee operations in the United States of TikTok, the wildly popular social video appl. But dig into the details and youll see that what Trumps White House is keen to present as a big win for national security looks more like a standard business dealor more cynically, a shakedown. Concerns around TikTok first bubbled up at the end of Trumps first term, when the 45th president, running unsuccessfully for re-election in 2020, presented the app, owned by the Chinese tech champion ByteDance, as a national-security concern. On both sides of the aisle, China hawks worry that TikToks algorithm could be used to catalyze opposition to the American way of life, and indoctrinate U.S. teens into Chinese ways of thinkingor nudge public opinion to be more favorable to the Chinese regime. Trump tried unsuccessfully to ban the app outright from the United States, a gambit that didnt stand up in court. He has continued to try and alter its ownership even as he appears to have changed tack about whether the platform ought to be banned outright. Trump has claimed that TikToks purported Chinese links still gave him pause, but that he was willing to allow the app to continue existing in the U.S. provided that it was brought under American control. With this finalized deal, even thats not guaranteedwhich could suggest this is little more than a shakedown and carve-out to ensure the U.S. capitalizes on the only non-American social network that has managed to gain a mass global foothold in the last 20 years. The leaked details of this deal seem to imply that the public debate and concerns were a red herring, says Catalina Goanta, associate professor in private law and technology at Utrecht University. The U.S. just wanted in on a profitable business model that has been growing faster and with more potential than any of its competitors, she argues. The terms of the agreement suggest that the joint venture will own between 45%and 50% of the new U.S.-Tiktok entity (reports differ on the precise percentages involved). Around one-third of the entity will be owned by ByteDances current investors, with the remainderan estimated 20% or sostill under ByteDances control. The deal is due to close by January 22. Others are equally uncertain that the deal matches up to what Trump claimed was the core concern. Will the sale enrich the new investors or protect American interests? asks Hussein Kanji, founder of Hoxton Ventures. Lets see if the algorithm changes in the new leadership to support a particular political viewpoint. So far, theres no suggestion that the apps algorithm will change in any way, beyond being fed U.S. user data to ensure the content is free from outside manipulation, said an internal memo sent by TikTok CEO Shou Chew to staff last week. That isnt significantly different from what already happens, except it draws slightly stronger fences around U.S-only users. The terms of the deal are believed to adopt the current TikTok algorithm, while the storage of user data within the United States will remain within the country and overseen by a local partner. In this case, that partner will be Oracle, under terms similar to those TikTok has already instigated elsewhere voluntarily, including in Europe (U.K. cybersecurity firm NCC Group oversees data access) where TikTok has built dedicated data centers for local users. ByteDance will reportedly still have control of the apps ecommerce, advertising, and marketing arms, all of which are core components of the business. In short, basically nothing has changed, except several U.S. firms get a part of the new companyand presumably, a share of its income. Its no surprise, then, that China has nodded the deal through: Little changes for them, except for homegrown champion ByteDance losing a proportion of its income from the app. Chinese state media sees this deal as a win for China, and it emphasized retaining global connectivity, which can also affect what kind of content is seen from outside of the U.S., says Goanta. Of course, the app could still change. It certainly would be easier to do so when U.S. companies control the data, the algorithm, and any decisions are overseen by a U.S. board. But itd be highly unusualsome might say self-defeatingfor TikTok in the United States to try and diverge from what made its global product successful. Instead, it looks like a classic Trump deal: Plenty of sound and fury, and a whole lot of hyperbole to justify very few changes that actually address the underlying issue that caused the brouhaha in the first place. The deal allows the president to portray action on a politically potent issue while avoiding a total ban that could alienate younger voters or provoke corporate backlash. For China, the arrangement shows it can be flexible without surrendering, allowing ByteDance to preserve that global reach for its flagship app. But as often happens under Trumps America First policy, American entities get a cut of the dealwhether theyre deserving of it or not.
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