TikTok Part 6: The Showdown

Mario was on the plane with President Trump. The journalist usually sit in the back of the plane waiting for the President to make a move. When he starts walking back, you know it. So you see, you know, some of the Secret Service agents move into different positions, and so we know, oh he's coming, he's on his way back. It's an electricity at that point because you know he's

coming back. It's going to be an intimate conversation. Trump had already said he might go after TikTok earlier that summer because it was owned by a Chinese company, but he had just made a vague threat, and Mario wanted to see if the President would say something more specific. TikTok. That was like my primary if if I had a question with the president, that was like my target for that day. I asked him about it. He was kind

of baffling on whether or not to announce it. No one really expected a straight answer from Trump, but the reporters that had day kept pressing him, and then the President came out and said he was going to band TikTok. He might sign something as soon as the next day. Trump said, I have that authority. I could do it with an executive order. This is something that's like concrete tomorrow,

hard day. I'm going to take this hard action, which is banning, and I'm going to do it in this manner, and so there's a much more definitive, serious tone to it. This was huge news because it wasn't just a conflict between the President and TikTok. Things between the US and China had never been worse. For Trump to pick a fight with TikTok meant that he was going after China in a big way. It's about maybe a dozen journalists.

I looked around just to make sure a to make sure I heard him right, because I'm wondering if everybody else is freaking out just like me because I'm already thinking, um, x amount of miles in the air. I don't have cell phone service. I need to tell my editors, like what's going on. I'm panicking a little bit inside, and I look around it. Everybody else has the same look of horror. You know, how long will it take until you know? I'm looking at my phone like when can

I get a bar? When can I get a bar? When the plane landed, the news rippled like an explosion across TikTok's teenage users. So it was actually I was in my room because I believe it was like one or two in the morning here for me, and I was about to go to bed, and then I get a call from my friends and he's like, oh my gosh, did you hear what happened? And then apparently, you know, Trump said that TikTok he was going to ban TikTok tomorrow,

like and it was Friday night. That's Gabby Murray. She's nineteen. She's a popular TikTok star who's spoken on previous episodes. It was kind of almost like a little panic thing, and you know, all night I was like freaking out and like I really couldn't calm down. I was super upset, and I was like, is this really the end? Teens on TikTok were spiraling and the late night TV shows

were eating this up. That's right. Instead of stopping a pandemic or helping unemployed Americans, he's pretending he has the power to unilaterally ban a social media app. Apparently this is a very real national security threat, the Chinese government knowing which Americans canon can't dance? What is he doing? Is he the President of the United States or the preacher from Footloose? And things were about to get even weirder. You're listening to Foundering. I'm your host, Shelley Bancho. This

is the last episode of our series about TikTok. It's the story of an improbable rise. The app captured the attention of an entire generation. It became the first social media app from China to build a global following. But TikTok became a victim of its own success. It grew to be so big that it got caught in a standoff between the US and China. And this was only the start of its problems. President Trump became so obsessed with TikTok. He threatened to kick it out of the

US altogether. We asked TikTok to comment on this episode, and a spokesperson referred me to a previous statement from Vanessa Papas, the CEO of TikTok. She said, when it comes to safety and security, we're building the safest app. We're here for the long run. More on that after a quick break by Dances. CEO John gi Ming is known as a quiet guy, a workaholic who avoids the limelight.

But when President Trump went after TikTok, it felt like a personal affront because you means spent his whole life striving to become a successful entrepreneur, and just when he succeeded in taking TikTok global and fulfilling his lifelong dream, the American President wanted to take it away from him. It's bizarre thinking back on it now, but for a really significant portion of Trump's attention was focused not only on coronavirus, the Democrats, or impeachment. He was zeroed in

on TikTok. So, after Trump says he's going to ban TikTok, you mean, does something unexpected. He fires off a series of letters to employees and says the company is facing an existential crisis. I asked my colleague to read parts of these letters. They're translated and edited for Claire Party. These past few months have been a challenging time for us all and over the last week you've probably heard

a lot of speculation about TikTok in the media. As you may know, in the current environment, we faced a real possibility of a forced sale of TikTok's US business or an executive order banning the app in the US. Sources told me that you mean new politicians were using TikTok as a punching bag, but he refused to believe that the US president whatever really shut down the app. That just seemed unthinkable. In one lettering sounds almost mournful

about all the work that had been poured into TikTok. Yesterday, I worked until dawn. Before I went to bed, I opened my phone and saw someone post a photo from our office building in Shinjin. At five thirty in the morning, the lights were still one. Let's be honest, many of our Chinese colleagues have made personal sacrifices, and I'll push to become a global company. You mean living in China, but he was keeping us ours to deal with the Trump fallout. That's a twelve hour time difference. I mean

was frustrated he felt unfairly singled out. I actually understand that as a Chinese company that's reached global status, people will hold us to a highest standard, but we don't have accurate information about us. He says. The US government was overreaching and its attempts to force TikTok to sell as a company, we have no choice but to abide by the law. But that's not what be out a side once. Their real goal is a full blown embargo

and more. Eming acknowledges that things might seem like a disaster, but he urges employees to hold steady. We need to show the vise misunderstandings. For the time being, we hope that people will not be too concerned about the shotdown damage to our reputation. Let's be patient and do the right thing. The TikTok band caught the company by surprise. Their new CEO, Kevin Mayer, had only been on the

job for two months. They hired Kevin from Disney. They hoped an American executive leading the company might get the U s government off their backs, but Trump went after them anyway. That led to another question, could an American president even ban a social media app? There was no precedent for this. I spoke with my colleague Kurt Wagner, He's a social media reporter. I remember my reaction was basically to laugh, Is this something he can he can

legally do? Right? Can he just tell people they can't have this app on their phones? And if so, how would you even go about enforcing that right? But you know, as with a lot of things with the Trump administration, I think very quickly, you you learned that just because something doesn't really make sense on the surface doesn't mean that it's not being seriously pursued behind the scenes. The TikTok and seemed to be about more than the app itself.

I think it became immediately clear that TikTok was being used in this broader trade war with China. You realize that it's not really about the app itself. It's about the leverage that I think Trump and his administration thought

that they would have over over China. And so what was expected to happen was for President Trump to come out and say byte Dance needs to basically sell off the US version of TikTok, and so as a result, byte Dance was then in the market for a buyer of its US business, and there was one name that floated to the top as a potential buyer. Microsoft e Ming had already held a number of secret meetings with Microsoft CEO sat An Indella to talk about how they

could work together. But once the Trump and Minister station turned up the heat on TikTok, those talks escalated. Microsoft put out a statement saying they were in talks to buy TikTok, and sources tell me that Donald Trump personally called Microsoft CEO to ask for specific items to be included in the press release before it went out. Yeah, companies do not announce deals before deals are done. Typically,

the letter from Microsoft was very uncommon. Typically, when a company like Microsoft by by TikTok, Microsoft and TikTok are talking, you don't have the President of the United States and his administration part of the negotiation. But this was not a normal acquisition, and you did have the President as part of the negotiation. Will you read that press release

that Microsoft put out. Yeah? Um, so this was from their corporate blog and it says following a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satia Adela and President Donald J. Trump, Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States. Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President's concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok, subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic

benefits to the United States. Microsoft appreciates the US governments and President Trump's personal involvement. What the heck is proper economic benefits to the United States. This was a very fun and bizarre wrinkle to this whole story. It was kind of learned later that President Trump was actually expecting some kind of payment in return for facilitating this arrangement. Right, So it struck a lot of people as being um, not only legally dubious, but certainly ethically dubious. Right, Like,

here's the president. He's demanding that this deal get done, and then on top of that, he's demanding that some type of payment go back to this says the U. S. Treasury. There was speculation that it would even be you know, to Trump himself. When we asked Microsoft about Trump's role in the negotiations. They declined to comment. This was a sobering moment for Yeming. It looked like TikTok could be snatched away for reasons outside its control. TikTok's fate seemed

to rest on the whims of President Trump. There was a lot of discussion at this time as well about this idea of maybe just using TikTok as a distraction, right, Like this was when the COVID fight was not going well. You know, the election is coming up, right, and the President was running out of money for his election efforts. So like this was something that he felt he could exert some level of control over that maybe you know, other parts of his life and life in America at

that time, he didn't really have that. We'll be right back. So this is when the clock starts ticking because Trump makes good on his threats. He issues a pair of executive orders giving TikTok a forty five day deadline to find a buyer. Sources told me that Eming was reluctant to sell his business, but he was under pressure because the band was looming and his investors, who had sunk seven point five billion dollars into by Dance over the years wanted their payout before it was too late. Over

in China, Eming wasn't hot water too. Because his attempts to appease the US government were really unpopular. People flooded Eming social media with messages slamming his choice to sell. They called him a U S lab doog, a trader. They accused him of kneeling Washington and betraying China. Here's former tech banker Roy Mom. They felt that Johniming was really just giving in without a fight. Um, how can you just given to the American government, you know, with

with their demands just like that, right. It's because it seemed like it was overnight. It was like the executive order came out and then John was like, okay, you know, that's what it felt like. So TikTok found itself in this situation where they were criticized in China for being too American and they were criticized in America for being too Chinese. Then the Chinese government decided to step in

new rules in China over the technology it exports. May mean selling TikTok in the US could need approval from Beijing. In the meantime, deal talks for TikTok's US operations have hit a bit of a snag, or maybe an entire roadblock. Until this moment, the Chinese government had mostly stayed out of Trump's fight with TikTok, but they intervened once it looked like advanced AI technology created by TikTok's Chinese parent

company might end up in the US. They came out with a new law that prohibited any sort of sale of TikTok without China's approval. Sources told me this shock teaming. He didn't see it coming. TikTok was stuck between the push and pull of the two countries. They needed to move fast. Their American investors decided to take matters into

their own hands. They start back channeling with Trump administration officials including Jared Kushner and Steve minu Chin to drive up the price of TikTok and to find a buyer that Trump would deem acceptable. That buyer was Oracle. Oracle is a big technology company that mostly built software products for businesses, not social media, so they seemed like a weird match for TikTok. What Oracle did have was a lot of money and very close relationships with President Trump.

And if your TikTok, half the battle is bringing Trump a deal that he will approve, and so I think there was some feeling that if Oracle were to make a bid, it might be more likely to get his stamp of approval. The relationship between Oracle and Trump was pretty cozy. Oracle executives donated tens of thousands of dollars to Trump's campaigns. It's CEO served on the president's transition team, and the founder even lent Trump his own house in

California for a fundraiser. Oracle made a billion dollar offer for TikTok's US business, but just when it looked like a possible solution was on the table, another bomb was dropped. The CEO of TikTok has resigned. Kevin Mayer led the company for just three months. Mayor said, quote, the political environment has sharply changed. He says he's thought about what the next phase of TikTok is going to look like,

and it's not going to include him. I call TikTok, I call sources, and I'm like, what the heck is going on? And very quickly learned that he had just emailed um the company to say that he was stepping down, and this was not only shocking because he had only been there a short amount of time, But Kevin is not a low key higher, if you will, like, he was a really big deal. He was a longtime executive at Disney. He was incredibly successful there, and it was

a pretty um dramatic exit. I love that you categorize it as not a low key higher because I remember that as soon as he was hired, they started talking about their American CEO who lives in Los Angeles, and you know, they really attached themselves on this all American CEO image. And in the end, you know, he only spent three months there and giving has been way way more time trying to find the perfect CEO, and then they find him and then he leaves after a hundred days.

And I also remember that Kevin wasn't really a good fit with the company's corporate culture. The CEO, John Giming at by Dwans, really wanted to hire this corporate soldier, this American face, who would kind of right the ship in the US and kind of do what he's told, and that it didn't really work out that way because Kevin really wanted to have a say in all the different decisions, and later on sources told me that I mean told co workers that he regretted hiring Kevin. TikTok

declined to comment on Kevin Mayer's departure. A few months after he stepped down, Kevin spoke to my colleague Emily Chang on Bloomberg TV, why did you leave and and do you have any regrets about that? I left because the job that I had, that I had signed up for and that I was I was I was doing, looked like it was not going to exist anymore, and you know, there was going to be a deal with Microsoft or Oraculture got to the Oracle, and at that time it seems like the right time for me to depart.

I don't want to rehash that too much. Why do you think US politicians get wrong about TikTok Um. Look, I think they think that TikTok is Um is controlled by the Chinese government, and I just never found it to be the case. I think the team in China has done a great job of it. In Kevin's place, by Dance's CEO, John gi Ming elevates an executive named Vanessa Papa's She's run big parts of TikTok for years, and she wrote the playbook on turning social media fame

into a career. But she's been passed over multiple times for the top job at TikTok. Still, Vanessa has stayed loyal to Ming. I interviewed her over the phone. I just have to ask, because it's my job. What's the latest? If you can say anything that the deal note negotiations of whether or not will be an answer by the STEM I cannot share, but understand you have to ask fair enough. Vanessa wasn't giving away much, but she did

allude to a change unfolding it. TikTok eating had been cooperating with the sell off of his company, but Vanessa indicated that he could be shifting away from that mindset. No. I think we've been really strong in our statements. So you know, we have expressed that we disagree with the executive order. UM, we are pursuing a number of pass forward and we are positive in that, you know, we think we'll have a positive outcome. Heres Vanessa telling me

they might have a positive outcome was revealing. It was the first hint that TikTok thought they might not have to cave to Trump's demands. After all, TikTok was gearing up for a fight. After months of being kicked around by the White House, the company starts running television ad to say so easy to make, almost as if they were taunting the President, using the ban as a marketing ploy. Today, years old, it works. I can't believe I learned all that on here. TikTok could go away at any moment,

so you better get it now. This drove a huge spike in downloads and revenue. Next TikTok takes the fight to court. There were three separate lawsuits from TikTok, its users, and its employees. I spoke to Patrick Ryan, He's a TikTok engineer behind one of the lawsuits. He told me he felt personally attacked by Trump's executive orders. He didn't like being accused of sending data on Americans over to China.

I thought about these accusations, so when I read through those things, I read those accusations not as being accusations just against the company, but his accusations against me, you know, as a employee of the company and in a position to know. Patrick says is in a position to know because he works in data security. He joined TikTok just months before Trump announced the band. Patrick left behind a cushy job at Google. He was one of hundreds of

TikTok employees who joined after the pandemic. Many had never met their colleagues in person. They were already feeling vulnerable when the President started attacking their employer for something they didn't even believe they were doing wrong. I feel like I'm in the middle of a square and you know, there's just a couple of us, and I feel like

we're getting kicked. And I feel like a lot of people are watching and they're not doing anything because they think that maybe we deserve it if they haven't seen any evidence. So Patrick sued the Trump administration on behalf of TikTok employees, and then there was another even more powerful lawsuit from the TikTok users themselves, Becasette and I'm suing Trump. What does this mean? That's Kasette Nab in

a TikTok video. She was one of three TikTok creators that sued the Trump and Illustration to put a stop to the band. Tick talk is all about using your voice to reach a global audience, and this is what the First Amendment is all about the president's executive order is violating our freedom of speech. And this lawsuit looked

like a grassroots effort, but it wasn't. Sources told me that TikTok recruited creators to file the lawsuit, connected them with powerful First Amendment lawyers, and help craft the legal strategy. In essence, TikTok orchestrated the whole thing. When I asked the company about this, they didn't want to comment. My sources told me that this lawsuit played right into a calculated strategy by TikTok to cultivate a group of everyday Americans who use the app, depend on the app, and

we'll speak out in defense of TikTok. You want to make sure that you've got a array of validators and in some cases amplifiers of your message that are going to have influence in the US market. That's Brett Bruin. He's a crisis manager who was watching these lawsuits closely. Brett served as a diplomat under President Obama. There is not any better strategy that I can think of than to get the most influential voices and align them with my product, align them with my policy preferences. So it

is not TikTok versus Trump. It is this army of influencers, and this is a lawsuit that worked. The judge sided with the creators and put a temporary block on the band. And the most ironic part to me was, here's Byte Dance, this company from China where speech is highly censored, and they're leaning on the US Constitution the right to free speech. So TikTok got a reprieve from the band, but there was still the matter of the sale. We'll be right back.

One afternoon in September, I got an email from my colleague who reports on Microsoft. It said hearing from a source that something deal wise is likely to be announced later today. So um, get ready everyone. I started making frantic calls to all my sources to try to find out what happened. We were the first to find out

that Oracle had pulled ahead. Minutes later we got word Microsoft was out, and weirdly enough, the deal wasn't announced by TikTok or Oracle, but by US Treasury Secretary Steve Manuchin. I want to be careful what I say, but I will confirm we did get a proposal over the weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner with Oracle, And once we started digging into the deal, we realized

this wasn't really a sale of tick Talk. Instead, TikTok had come up with some crafty corporate restructuring where they would spin off a new company called TikTok Global and sell a steak in this new company to Oracle and its partners. As for ye Ming by Dance and their investors, they would keep eighty per cent of the company. E Ming would continue to wield outsize power on the company's decisions.

We were shocked at this deal with the Oracle, even past muster with the Trump administration, because it didn't address the fact that TikTok is still a majority owned by Chinese company. But apparently Oracle was able to convince Trump. Here's Kurt, we should have known all along that the deal was going to go to the people who were closest to the president. And I remember being so confused

because this was nothing that Trump had wanted. And so I remember being like, wait a second, but Trump said, I wanted this to be owned by US company and for to be completely spun off away from China, away from Bye Dances CEO John Gimming, And this was not that it was not that you start to also come to the realization that perhaps this wasn't really the security

threat that it was painted to be. Right. If that were the case, then you would think that it would require byte Dance to be completely removed from the equation. So even though byte Dance was sidestepping most of Trump's demands, it appeared to be good enough for Trump. But what happened to Microsoft? They were the first to express interests in TikTok. They were all those secret meetings between the two companies. Later, Microsoft CEO Satyn Adela sat down with

my colleague Emily Chang. Microsoft tried to buy TikTok and it didn't happen. Why did you want to buy TikTok? We had a very crisp vision for what we would want to do with it, uh and including, for example, addressing some of the very real concerns around national security. But that was the last summer and we moved on. He doesn't sound that sad that Microsoft lost out. Sources told us that Microsoft felt this new deal was not what they had bargained for. Microsoft wanted in when TikTok

would be theirs, and there is a loan. They didn't want to own a minority stake, So Oracle wins the bid, and Trump tells reporters he gave the deal his blessing. Here's Trump in front of his blaring helicopter. We have some very big news on TikTok. TikTok is moving along. We're dealing with Oracle. But we'll see whether or not at all happens. But perceptually, I think it's a great deal for America. It will have nothing to do with China. It'll be totally secure. But that would be the last

time we hear Trump talked publicly about TikTok. He moved on. Sources told me White House officials wouldn't even hern TikTok's calls. In a way, this was kind of a stroke of luck for you, Ming. Here's Kurt. I think President Trump and his administration got sidetracked. I think that the election was upcoming. I think it was shortly after this that the president got the coronavirus and was suddenly kind of

out of commission for a few days. And this type of thing which he had made sure the administration was right in the middle of suddenly couldn't move forward without their cooperation, and so this deal that never crossed the finish line because there was no one there to usher it through. And then we're kind of stuck when our editors asking every day, like what's happening, what's happening, And

meanwhile there was an election. Trump moves on to other fights and other challenges, and he leaves office, and he leaves office without a deal, and we never get really the ending of the story. I think that this is a totally frustrating chapter in the Trump presidency. You know, this was the business deal of the decade that never actually happened. And what bothers me the most as a reporter who spent years covering this story is that we never got to the bottom of whether there was a

security threat posed by TikTok. We still don't have the answer. Trump officially leaves office, Joe Biden becomes president, and his administration makes it clear that TikTok is not a priority. The Biden administration puts an official hold on the TikTok sale process, the court proceedings, and the ban. He says he'll look into the national security risks, but sources tell us that's unlikely to happen anytime soon because Biden is

busy with coronavirus and the US economy. As for the deal with Oracle, well, it's of fates, and it says of this big monumental chapter in the company's history suddenly erased, poof gone like it never even happened. And there's another piece of context I think is important. In recent decades, China has banned most US internet companies from operating in the country, and in China there's less recourse to legal challenges,

but TikTok was able to capitalize on American freedoms. This is a big reason why TikTok wasn't banned or sold to a US company, because the US has democracy, an independent court system, presidential elections, and now for the foreseeable future, the US even has TikTok. I checked back in with Katie Feeney, an eighteen year old TikTok star I spoke to right after the band was announced. She had been so upset, but when I called her up six months later,

to be completely honest, I forgot about it. I went from like every day I was terrified and like going crazy in my mind going back and forth and thought about what I'm going to do once TikTok has gone to just not even thinking about it at all. I feel like it's like the stages of I guess, like a breakup. I remember learning in school there's like denial and then acceptance or anger, and there's all these different stages. Like That's kind of what I felt like with TikTok.

It was like I was going through an awful breakup. Katie wasn't the only one who felt like she was going through a breakup. In the end, there were many broken hearts. Trump got dumped, Microsoft got dumped, Oracle got dumped. Here's Kurt. I think these were all worlds that are used to getting their way, right. You have um the president, you have some of the top venture capitalists and all of technology. You have some of the top technology c e o s, and you have the Chinese government. Right,

which of those groups usually loses? And the answer is none of them. They're all used to winning, and they're all used to kind of getting things to to go the way they want. That's such a good point and also underscores why the ending of this is so monumental because all these people who are used to getting their way,

none of them got their way. The person who got their way was the CEO a Bye Dance John Uming, this Chinese entrepreneur who kind of came out of nowhere and built this company and was able to, you know, um win over all those all those different people, the Bye Dance ceo one. When I go back and listen to all my interviews, almost no one I spoke to, but you mean would come out on top. Here's where Ima.

He's a very very rational person. He expected to be a very tough journey, and that he understood that this was a fight. You mean, might be unusually quiet and meek for tech ceo, but he has the personality it takes to write out the turbulence he perseveres. He prides himself on delayed gratification, and you know, in a way, he's a little massochistic, so he really has a like oll. He prised himself on having a lot of patients and

um going after the really really difficult problems. This idea of delayed gratification is kind of a stereotype about Chinese executives and government officials that they can endure the short term pain and wait out the US electoral cycle because American politics are so temporary, and in China, Chi Jimping has no term limits. He's making decisions for the decades ahead, not forty five day decrees. But that's exactly what you mean.

Bet on that if he actually fought back against Trump, pushed back against his own powerful investors, and delayed the ban in court just long enough that Trump would get distracted and lose interest. It took a lot of klutzbah, but he means plan worked. He was proven right. As for Alex jew, the founder who came up with so many of the original ideas behind TikTok, he also managed

to hang on. He took a strategy and investment role at Byte Dance, He helped Ming on the U S TikTok deal, and even though Alex failed at politicking on behalf of TikTok and got pushed aside for an American CEO, in the end he outlasted Kevin Mayer, the guy hired to replace him. Alex remains committed to that early vision of TikTok he hatched on the train years ago. Several months after Trump left office, e Ming installed a guy named Showed Za Chew as a CEO of TikTok show

his connections in the West. He went to Harvard Business School and worked at Goldman Sachs, but he speaks Chinese and lives in Singapore. And not long after that you Ming said he would be stepping down as CEO of Byte Dance. He released a statement that I want to read a few lines from. He wrote, the truth is I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager. I'm more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles than

actually managing people. Similarly, I'm not very social, preferring solitary activities like being a line, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming about what may be possible. Eman says he'll stay at the company to focus on long term strategy, but our sources tell us that you Mean will still be running the show by Dances gearing up for a massive I p O that could make you Mean one of the richest people in China. This would also put a target on his back from the Chinese government, which has

been scrutinizing the country's wealthy tech moguls. This may be the reason why Eming wants to lay low and take a less public facing role. TikTok is still growing relentlessly. Teams the world over are enraptured by it, and there's no doubt in my mind it poses an existential threat to Facebook, Google and Snapchat, because even as it gets bigger, it keeps coming out with new features that get people hooked, giving TikTok even more time, more money, and more data.

I wouldn't be surprised if pretty soon we see John Yuman's face on a business biography like the ones he used to read back in his college days. Because you Mean achieved many firsts. First Chinese entrepreneur to build a consumer app that became a global hit, first person to get his private business almost banned by an American president, first and only person to come out on top. You Mean and Alex have fundamentally changed the perception of Chinese

tech companies. TikTok out smarted US competitors and President Trump. The company used billions of dollars to flood the world with a social media app no one had even heard of just a few years ago. Ultimately, TikTok woke the world up to the very real threat of competition from China.

The tech industry and the US government may not have taken that threat seriously enough before, but they certainly are now because the US had free reign over the global Internet for so many decades without ever really having to compete, and now TikTok proves that era has ended. Foundering is hosted by me Shelley Banjo. Sean When is our executive producer. Raymondo is our audio engineer. Molly Nugent is our associate producer.

Additional reporting by Kurt Wagner, Chipping Huang, Sarah Fryar, Dina Bass, Brodie Ford, Tom Giles, and Mario Parker. Special thanks to Edwin Chan, Peter Elstrom, Emily Chang, Jenny Leonard, Jennifer Jacobs, and Salaja Molson. Our story editors are Mark Million and Vander May and Molly Shoots. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. This is our last episode about TikTok, but please stay subscribed in your feed. We'll have more exciting episodes of Foundering in just a few months.