Southeast Asia foreign ministers seek breakthrough in Myanmar conflict and South China Sea dispute

EILEEN NG
Updated Sun, January 19, 2025 
 

Malaysia ASEAN
Malaysia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan delivers his speech during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Retreat (AMM) in Langkawi Island, Malaysia, on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Azneal Ishak, Pool)
ASSOCIATED PRESS


LANGKAWI, Malaysia (AP) — Southeast Asian foreign ministers gathered Sunday for their first meeting this year under the regional bloc's new chair, Malaysia, seeking a breakthrough over Myanmar’s drawn-out civil war and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The retreat on the idyllic northern resort island of Langkawi was the first major meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations hosted by Malaysia. Officials said it aims to chart the bloc’s direction for the year as it tries to resolve Myanmar's deadly four-year crisis and tensions over China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said Myanmar — represented by a low-level Foreign Ministry official after its junta leaders were barred from formal ASEAN meetings — briefed the gathering about plans for a general election this year. But the bloc wants Myanmar's government to ensure peace before any polls are held, he said.

“We said the election has to be inclusive. The election cannot be in isolation, it has to involve all stakeholders,” he told a news conference at the end of the retreat. “We told them the election is not our priority. Our priority is to stop the violence.”
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The crisis in Myanmar has emerged as one of the bloc’s biggest challenges since a military coup ousted an elected civilian government in February 2021, plunging the country into conflict. It has sparked an armed resistance movement, with rebel forces now controlling large parts of the country. The war has killed tens of thousands of people, and displaced millions.

ASEAN’s peace plan and other efforts to seek a solution have so far been futile, hampered by the bloc's non-interference policy and the Myanmar junta's refusal to comply. The military government hopes an election will legitimize its rule, but critics say polls are unlikely to be free or fair.

Malaysia, which brought Myanmar into ASEAN during its chairmanship of the bloc in 1997, is expected to take a more proactive stance as the Myanmar crisis has led to the flourishing of criminal activities, online scams and human trafficking along Myanmar’s border.

Hasan said Malaysia had appointed Othman Hashim, a former foreign ministry senior official, as special envoy for ASEAN chair to Myanmar to engage various factions in the country to find a way forward.

“We have no intention to carve out Myanmar,” he said, adding that dialogue and diplomacy were the best strategies to help the country return to a democratic path.
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Hasan said the meeting also discussed implications of the second term of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump on the region amid its rivalry with China. He said ministers raised concerns that competition between the major powers may increase tensions and have spillover effects in the region. He said ASEAN ministers stressed the urgency to bolster regional unity and make economic integration a top priority amid the global uncertainties.

“We must ensure that ASEAN remains our central go-to platform for solution seeking... We are the speakers and not the spoken-for. We must drive our own path forward,” he said.

Tensions in the South China Sea, one of the world's vital shipping lanes, were also high on the agenda following violent confrontations in the waters last year. Hasan said the ministers called for accelerated negotiations between ASEAN and China on a code of conduct in the waterway. Officials earlier targeted them for conclusion in 2026 but the talks have stalled over disagreements including whether the pact should be binding and its scope of coverage.

“We stressed that the South China Sea must remain peaceful and stable,” Hasan said.

ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei along with Taiwan have overlapping claims with China, which asserts sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea.

Chinese and Philippine vessels clashed repeatedly last year. Chinese forces also assaulted Vietnamese fishermen and Chinese patrol vessels ventured into areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as exclusive economic zones. ASEAN has not openly criticized China, which is the bloc’s top trading partner.

As chair, Malaysia is likely to push for quiet diplomacy as it balances security challenges with economic gains, analysts say.

“It would be pragmatism on Malaysia’s side, as the country — as well as ASEAN as a whole — lack the diplomatic and military heft to confront China on the South China Sea,” said Muhamamd Faizal Abdul Rahman, a research fellow at Singapore's S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

IMPERIALI$M

Across Africa, Russia is growing in influence. What might Moscow want?

SAME AS AMERIKA & CHINA

Nimi Princewill, CNN
Fri, January 17, 2025 

While Russian ally Bashar al-Assad was being toppled by rebels in Syria, another friend of Moscow, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, was being chaperoned by Kremlin-backed mercenaries in the conflict-ridden Central African Republic (CAR), where armed groups are yearning to oust him.

“Without the protection of Wagner (a private Russian military force), he (Touadéra) could not be president at this time,” Aboubakar Siddick, spokesperson for an alliance of rebel groups in CAR, known as the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC-F), told CNN.

Siddick said that the CPC-F rebels were feeling “inspired” by Assad’s ouster, stating: “Touadéra’s dismissal is imperative.”

In a sign of the importance Russia places in its relationships in Africa, Vladimir Putin met Thursday with Touadéra in Moscow, in what were the Russian president’s first international talks this year.

“This is connected to the fact that we are developing relations with the Central African Republic in all possible areas, including highly sensitive areas related to security. And we intend to develop this cooperation further,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov ahead of the meeting.

Decades of conflict in CAR mirror the instability in other fragile African states where reliance on Russia’s military offerings has become increasingly prevalent, amid an aggressive push by Moscow to lessen Western influence on the continent.

As Russia’s foothold in Africa expands – notably in the mineral-rich Sahel region that is beset by recurring coups, armed rebellion and extremist insurgency – anti-Western sentiments, partly fueled by Russian propaganda, are engineering the exit of Western troops from swathes of territory. The Kremlin is the most favored to fill the vacuum they leave.

Holding placards with pro russian slogans, demonstrators gather in Bangui on March 5, 2022 during a rally in support of Russia. - Carol Valade/AFP/Getty Images

Ivory Coast and Chad are the latest in a string of former French colonies in West and Central Africa to demand the withdrawal of French and other Western forces from their territories, treading in the path of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Those three, all now controlled by juntas, have since turned to Russia for security support, ignoring calls from their Western ex-partners for a swift return to civilian rule.

Supporters of Burkina Faso's junta leader Ibrahim Traore hold national flags of Burkina Faso and Russia during a demonstration in Ouagadougou on October 6, 2022. - Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images

Moscow is also a sought-after partner by non-French former colonies such as Equatorial Guinea, which hosts an estimated 200 military instructors deployed by Russia in November to protect the Central African nation’s presidency. Its authoritarian leader President Teodoro Obiang, 82, has ruled the tiny, oil-rich country for 45 years following a coup in 1979.
Outside West and Central Africa, Russia is bolstering its presence in the continent’s north, where Wagner forces back eastern Libya’s de facto ruler, Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Following Assad’s ouster as Syrian leader last month, Moscow has operated multiple flights to and from an airbase in eastern Libya — some headed to Mali, CNN found — suggesting a shift from the Syrian bases that have served as a hub for its military operations in Africa and the Mediterranean region.
Statues honor Wagner figures in CAR

In CAR, an erstwhile French colony, the Russian mercenaries that have operated in the country since 2018 have become the dominant force, following the final exit of French troops in 2022.

At Thursday’s meeting with Putin, Touadéra thanked the Russian leader for supporting his nation and helping it to achieve stability.
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“Today, the army trained by Russian instructors is capable of repelling terrorists and anyone who encroaches on the territory of CAR. We will continue to work together to strengthen security throughout the country, at the borders, wherever the threat comes from. Russian instructors are truly professionals,” he said.

The French — who deployed to CAR to help stabilize the nation after a coup in 2013 sparked a civil war — retreated over what the armed forces ministry said was CAR’s failure to halt “massive disinformation campaigns” targeting France amid a competition with Russia for influence.

French President Emmanuel Macron last week slammed African leaders for showing “ingratitude” over the deployment of his nation’s troops in the Sahel, saying that Sahel states only remained sovereign because of the arrival of French forces.

Macron also dismissed the notion that French troops had been expelled from the region, adding that France was only “reorganizing itself” on the continent. “We left because there were coups d’état… France no longer had a place there because we are not the auxiliaries of putschists.”

A US State Department report published last February outlined how Kremlin-funded disinformation had taken root across Africa with the creation of a pro-Russia news agency called the “African Initiative” — which, with the help of hired local journalists, markets Moscow to the continent while tarnishing the West’s reputation.

CAR’s army, bolstered by Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, United Nations forces and Rwandan troops, has battled to keep armed groups such as the CPC-F at bay and reclaim territory seized by rebels. But it is the Russians who are widely credited with helping the nation stave off collapse.

Statues honoring the late Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and top commander, Dmitry Utkin, were unveiled in CAR’s capital, Bangui, in December, a Telegram channel linked to the mercenary group reported. Both men were killed in a plane crash northwest of Moscow in August 2023, two months after they had launched an abortive rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.

A photograph from December 3, 2024, shows a newly inaugurated bronze statue in the likeness of late Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin (left), and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, erected in Bangui. - Annelo Niamolo/AFP/Getty Images

Wagner, rebranded as the Africa Corps and placed under the umbrella of the Russian defense ministry after Prigozhin’s death, still operates under the Wagner brand in CAR, where its mercenaries are possibly the group’s most active in Africa.

CAR’s communications minister, Maxime Balalou, told CNN the statues were “inaugurated as part of the cooperation between our country and Russia,” adding that a bilateral defense agreement “allowed Russia to provide us with weapons” as well as “handling and training for our defense and security forces, (and) assisting our armed forces on the ground.”

Another monument, depicting Wagner troops guarding a local woman and her children, was erected in Bangui three years ago.

“Russia’s significant contribution helped stabilize and secure CAR,” Balalou said, adding that “at the height of CAR’s crisis, we were abandoned… but Russia responded.”
Protection – at what cost?

Not everyone views Russia’s involvement in Africa through a positive lens.

The Kremlin’s guns-for-hire mission is far from humanitarian, according to Irina Filatova, a Russian historian specializing in African history. It’s a mixed quest for power and cash, she said, as Moscow hunts for alternative revenue to sustain its war in Ukraine amid a raft of Western sanctions.

“The Russians are providing this support (to troubled African nations) in exchange for either the full control or a percentage of the control from their mineral resources. That is what Russia needs: It needs funding, and it needs influence. It helps its war in Ukraine,” Filatova, a senior research associate at the University of Cape Town, told CNN from South Africa.

In CAR, Martin Ziguélé, a former prime minister and current opposition MP, told CNN that Wagner’s remuneration for providing military services to his nation “is done in an extremely hidden and discreet manner” by the Touadéra-led government.

Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera. - Richard Bord/Getty Images

Previous CNN investigations found that companies linked to ex-Wagner leader Prigozhin had won concessions to mine gold and diamonds in CAR, where nearly 70% of the population lives in extreme poverty — the fifth highest poverty rate in the world, according to a World Bank assessment in 2023.

One of those companies owns rights to the Ndassima gold mine, located 440 kilometers (273 miles) east of Bangui, whose gold proceeds are valued at over $1 billion, according to the US Treasury Department.

“Authorities have no right of inspection,” Jean-Fernand Koena, who heads a union of CAR’s journalists, told CNN about what he said was Wagner’s total control of the Ndassima mine.

CAR’s government, he said, cannot monitor “where the gold that they (Prigozhin-linked company) mine goes,” adding that there is “neither public accounting nor information from the ministry of mines.”

CNN has contacted the mines ministry for comment.

The US Treasury Department said in a statement announcing sanctions in June 2023 that the company, Midas Ressources, had “in conjunction with the Wagner Group” denied “CAR government officials the ability to inspect the Ndassima mine.”

The same statement said another company affiliated with Prigozhin, named as Diamville, had “shipped diamonds mined in the CAR to buyers in the UAE and Europe.”

The Treasury further reported that in 2022 (the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine), two companies – Diamville and Industrial Resources – took part in a gold-selling scheme to convert CAR-origin gold into US dollars and that the latter knowingly “participated in the transfer by hand of cash to Russia” — in a bid to bypass US sanctions on Russian financial institutions.
‘Win-win cooperation’

A report by the World Gold Council, an international association of gold producers, puts Wagner’s earnings from its illicit gold dealings at an estimated $2.5 billion since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“This includes the profits from mines and refineries under Russian control, as well as retainers for security services, in CAR, Sudan and Mali,” the report said.

In 2022, CNN also investigated Russia’s plunder of Sudan’s gold, uncovering more than a dozen Russian gold-smuggling flights out of the war-torn country in exchange for backing its military leadership.

The following year, CNN uncovered evidence that Wagner had been arming a Sudanese militia group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is engaged in a bitter war with Sudan’s armed forces for control of the country. Both Prigozhin and the RSF denied this at the time.

For CAR, the murky underbelly of its military partnership with Russia also comes “at the cost of serious violations of human rights,” Koena said.

Wagner’s alleged atrocities in Africa are widely reported. In CAR, its forces were found to have “summarily executed, tortured, and beaten civilians” since 2019, according to a 2022 report by the rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Balalou, the communications minister, did not address these allegations but told CNN: “We are developing a new form of win-win cooperation with Russia.” He didn’t specify what this entailed.

Vladislav Ilin, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in CAR, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Outside CAR, similar atrocities, including the killing of civilians, have been committed by Wagner, the HRW claimed in another report last year, this time uncovering the group’s alleged deadly activities in Mali, where it partners with the West African nation’s military to fight insurgents.

This undated photograph handed out by French military shows Russian mercenaries boarding a helicopter in northern Mali. - French Army/AP

Wagner has suffered some of its worst losses on the continent in Mali.

In response to a question from CNN about the nature and scope of Russia’s military partnerships on the continent, the Kremlin’s Peskov said: “We are purposefully developing our cooperation with African countries, including interaction in sensitive areas related to security.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense has not yet responded to CNN’s request for comment on the widespread allegations of abuse and misconduct attributed to Wagner forces in CAR and Mali.
Competition for influence

The Kremlin isn’t the only foreign power jostling for influence in Africa.

With the US largely focused on the Middle East, China has made deep inroads into the continent over decades, expanding military ties and claiming the title of Africa’s top trading partner for the past 15 years, according to Beijing.

China has also financed tens of billions worth of development projects across Africa, including under its flagship Belt and Road global infrastructure drive launched in 2013.

Projects under the initiative’s umbrella have generated accusations of lax environmental and labor standards, as well as risky lending, with critics saying China has saddled low- and middle-income governments with overly high levels of debt relative to their GDPs. Beijing has sought to push back on Western criticism over those debts.

Mutasim Ali, a legal adviser at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, a Canadian NGO, told CNN that in his view, Russia and China tend to share a common trait in their dealings with Africa.

“Russians and Chinese do not care about democracy, human rights violations, corruption, and the like… They’re happy to protect dictators and human rights violators. That’s one of the reasons why Russians are getting a lot more influence,” he said, contrasting their approach with Western powers such as the US and France, who prioritize democracy and human rights protections.

A report by the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies in 2022 highlighted concerns over abusive labor practices, unsafe working conditions and lack of transparency among Chinese-owned companies operating in southern Africa.

The Chinese Mission to the African Union has not yet responded to CNN’s request for comment on the claim China does not prioritize democracy and human rights protections in its dealings with African states.

China and Russia were the main arms suppliers to sub-Saharan Africa between 2019 and 2023, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Addressing African delegates at a summit in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping claimed ties between Beijing and Africa were their “best in history,” as he pledged billions of dollars in financial support for the continent, in addition to $140 million in military aid.

A Chinese foreign ministry statement issued after the summit said Beijing was committed to building a “shared future” with Africa and that “China will continue to respect African countries’ political and economic choices based on their own national conditions and honor the principles of noninterference in African countries’ internal affairs.”

In Koena’s view, China’s policy of non-interference speaks to how different powers operate in Africa, with China focusing on economics and Russia on security.

“In a renewed resentment against Western policy in Africa, China is imposing itself on the economic level through trade and infrastructure while Russia wants to be the military response for the stability of sometimes autocratic regimes,” he said.

For Koena’s country, CAR, which has experienced decades of instability, “the message of peace and security gets across more quickly than the economy,” he added. For as long as this continues, the Russian military presence will likely be welcomed by its leaders.

CNN’s Anna Chernova contributed to this report.

CNN.com

Trump to Declare National Energy Emergency, Unlocking New Powers

Ari Natter and Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Mon, January 20, 2025 


(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he will “declare a national energy emergency,” as he orders steps intended to unleash domestic energy production and undo Biden-era policies designed to fight climate change.

The US boasts “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address Monday. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help us to do it.”

The declaration is among a host of changes Trump plans to order Monday to reorient US policy away from the fight against global warming — and toward fossil fuel production. That includes an assault on Biden-era regulations that compelled greater sales of electric vehicles Trump has dubbed an “EV mandate.” In his speech, Trump vowed that his actions Monday will end the “green new deal” and the electric-vehicle mandate.

While many of Trump’s executive actions will kick off a lengthy regulatory process, they’re set to touch the full spectrum of the US energy industry, from oil fields to car dealerships. They also underscore Trump’s determination to reorient federal government policy behind oil and gas production, a sharp pivot from outgoing President Joe Biden’s efforts to curb fossil fuels.

A White House official said Trump’s planned initiatives are aimed at cutting red tape and regulations that have restrained investment in natural-resource production critical to lowering costs for American consumers, since energy prices affect every single part of the economy. The changes also are key to bolstering national security and exerting US energy dominance around the world, said the official, who asked for anonymity to brief reporters on the directives before they were public.

While Trump plans to undo burdens on some forms of energy production, he is also singling out wind power for negative treatment. According to a White House fact sheet, Trump’s “energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms.”

Among other plans is an executive order specifically targeting natural resource production in Alaska, which is blessed with an abundance of oil, gas and critical minerals, the official said. The Biden administration imposed restrictions on energy development in the state, including on federal lands earmarked for oil production nearly a century ago.

Trump is poised to order the Interior Department to begin undoing some of the restrictions right away, including limits on activity within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a tract of land in the northwest corner of the state that’s the size of Indiana and home to an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The reserve — home to ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil project — also provides habitat for caribou, grizzly bears and migratory birds.

Trump’s planned national emergency declaration will be rooted in a rationale that high energy costs are unnecessary, resulting from policy decisions in Washington.

US electricity demand is expected to surge to unprecedented levels in coming years, fed by artificial intelligence, data centers and domestic manufacturing. Natural gas-fired power plants are expected to fulfill much of that coming demand, though technology companies have been negotiating deals to ensure electricity supplies from nuclear and renewable projects.

A national energy emergency declaration will unlock a host of authorities that will enable the US to produce core natural resources and quickly build again, the official said. It wasn’t immediately clear how such a declaration would be used, though the move allows a president to tap into as many as 150 special powers normally intended to address hurricanes, terrorist attacks and other unforeseen events, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice.

It’s not immediately clear whether Trump could use the authorities to achieve his goal of building more power plants. During Trump’s first term, he attempted to sustain operations of unprofitable coal and nuclear power plants by invoking emergency authority contained in the Federal Power Act that is typically reserved for natural disasters and other crises. The effort was eventually abandoned.

Trump’s planned declaration underscores the dramatic shift in energy and environmental policy in Washington. Environmentalists have for years been pressuring Biden to declare a similar climate emergency, but use the proclamation to halt oil exports and blunt domestic flows of crude instead.

Cold War Statute

A declaration would allow Trump to tap emergency authorities under a Cold-War era statute initially used by President Harry Truman to increase steel production during the Korean War. Biden invoked the same law, the Defense Production Act, to encourage US manufacturing of renewable energy technologies including solar panels, fuel cells and heat pumps he said were needed to combat climate change and increase domestic security. During Trump’s first term, he weighed using the same law to keep struggling coal plants running.

One possibility now is declaring a “grid security emergency” using authority contained in a 2015 transportation law, said Mark P. Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law. “‘Emergency’ is not defined by Congress, so the president likely has broad authority to declare an ‘energy emergency’ in the first place,” he said in an email.

Trump is prepared to compel policy shifts that would enable new oil and gas development on federal lands, while directing a rollback of Biden-era climate regulations, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not be named because the efforts aren’t official.

Trump also is set to order his administration to roll back federal incentives for EVs, while triggering a retreat from a set of stringent government regulations governing vehicle pollution and fuel economy. Trump will put an end to the EV mandate as part of an “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, the White House official said.

Trump’s executive order will also target government efficiency standards that limit consumer choices for products including dishwashers, gas stoves and shower heads, the official said. During his first term, Trump eased Energy Department water usage limits on shower heads after complaining low water flow was making it harder to properly wash his hair.

Paris Agreement

According to the White House fact sheet, Trump will once again withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 pact under which the US and nearly 200 other nations agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

That diplomatic retreat dovetails with Trump’s planned domestic efforts to ease a suite of regulations limiting pollution from power plants and automobiles — mandates seen as critical for the US to meet its promise to halve greenhouse gas emissions at least 50% by the end of the decade. As the second-largest emitter of planet-warming pollution, the US has been viewed as an important contributor to the fight against climate change.

Trump is set to lift a moratorium on new US licenses to widely export liquefied natural gas, making good on a campaign pledge to rescind the pause implemented under Biden.

Other planned first-day actions include ordering a reversal of Biden’s decision to withdraw some 625 million acres of US waters from being available for oil and gas leasing. Biden’s declaration has already drawn a legal challenge from the American Petroleum Institute, Alaska and the Gulf states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, but the legality of Trump’s reversal will also likely be decided by federal courts. The last time Trump tried a similar move — reversing an Obama-era withdrawal from Arctic waters — it was rebuffed by an Alaska-based federal district court.

--With assistance from Stephanie Lai.

(Updates with comments from Trump and details on orders from second paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Trump will launch a war with California over water. The first battles have already begun 

 Opinion
Tom Philp

THE SACRAMENTO BEE
Sun, January 19, 2025 

Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire in a home along the Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on Jan. 8, 2025. The Southern California fires have ignired a political storm over state water management.


Donald Trump’s second presidency will restart a fight with California over water, and the first battles have already begun. We will no longer fight over what our best science is telling us. We are beginning to avoid science altogether, one endangered fish at a time.

Consider that the administrations of Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom have done better than Trump in his first presidency at producing more water out of our two big projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in certain circumstances. Yet more water for San Joaquin Valley Republicans is no longer enough. Suddenly more water is a sign of “mismanagement.”

This feels different. This feels dangerous.

Californians thirst for water just as they long to maintain the beauty and the native life in our remarkable Sierra rivers and the Delta, fish large and small. Environmental protection has never been about choosing which native inhabitants of this state deserve protection or death. But Trump loves to deride a small native fish, the Delta smelt, whose migration patterns can force the slowdown of pumps that provide water to farms and cities.

These first battles suggest that some California wildlife should be expendable. But where does it end? And how can planned extermination ever be okay in some future approach to water management when under both state and federal environmental law, it’s illegal?

Opinion

The recent catastrophic fires around Los Angeles have tragically ignited a partisan, political storm over movements from Northern California water southward, never mind that Southern California now has more water in reserve than at any time in history.

Trump, who takes office Monday, could launch a federal reboot of California water rules at any time. Any move, such as declaring the Delta smelt as extinct or removing it from environmental protection, would not happen overnight. The bottom line is that the more that Washington’s and Sacramento’s approach to water begins to differ, the greater the chaos will result throughout a statewide, interconnected water system. Trump and Newsom are on a path to water’s version of a civil war.
Delta smelt loom as Target One

This small fish that smells like a cucumber may not be the most important in the food chain, so it has become the easiest political target to eliminate. A far bigger water threat to farms and cities alike is climate change, and how rising temperatures are predicted to dramatically reduce our surface and groundwater supplies. Trump is trying to turn the attention to a very modest amount of water supply that is not pumped from the Delta in order to help save this one fish.

The science on how to protect smelt and provide water supply is so much better than it once was, which makes this looming political fight over its future so meaningless and destructive.

In the past 15 years, researchers have taught us precisely when to worry about smelt swimming toward the southern Delta pumps of the federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project. It’s when the clear summer waters of the estuary get murky from winter storms or wind. Smelt wait for these turbid conditions to migrate to their winter spawning grounds. Ever since this discovery, the goal has been to prevent plumes of turbid water containing smelt from getting near the pumps in the first place.
How Newsom came up with more water supply than Trump

In his first term as president, Trump repeatedly stated he would provide more water to California farmers and directed his regulators to deliver. But his regulators did not ignore this science about the smelt and murky water. Instead, Trump’s 2019 regulators came up with new winter pumping restrictions to slow the pumping during these moments of conflict.

Critical of Trump’s Delta water regulations, Biden would rewrite these rules, known as biological opinions. The Newsom administration would update its rules as well to enforce the California Endangered Species Act.

And then something defying conventional political wisdom happened. Biden’s and Newsom’s teams would fine-tune regulations to produce more water supply when things get downright murky in the Delta. This was not political. Rather, new science helped regulators get smarter at pinpointing precisely when to slow down the pumping, and for how long.

The new firestorm of falsehood

The same western weather pattern that caused the ferocious winds in Southern California also blew through the Delta. Clear waters turned brown. Plumes of muddy water began migrating toward the water projects. A potential pumping conflict was afoot.

Sticking to its plan, the state and federal projects began slightly slowing the pumping. Little supply was reduced in recent days. The water operations of the Newsom/Biden era have produced more water supply since mid-December than if it had been operating under Trump’s old management plan.

Yet Republicans are acting outraged.

“The actions being taken right now by state and federal agencies to reduce water supplies is the starkest example of the mismanagement of California’s water supply that affects every Californian,” said Republican Vince Fong of Bakersfield.

“The future of our farms, families and communities is at stake,” said Republican Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo of Tulare.

I fear that the new goal is to never slow Delta water pumping for the smelt. Once this endangered fish is gone, it will be onto the next fish on the brink with the same cries of mismanagement. This is how a system of laws, science and environmental protection begins to unravel. It all could begin in earnest as soon as Monday.

'Spare No Expense,' Says Biden, But Who's Really Footing The Bill, As The Los Angeles Wildfire Damage Surpasses $250 Billion

Adrian Volenik
Sun, January 19, 2025 

The Los Angeles wildfires have caused widespread destruction, with over 40,000 acres burned, 12,300 structures destroyed and thousands displaced. According to estimates from AccuWeather, the financial impact is between $250 billion and $275 billion and counting.

President Joe Biden recently declared, "I told the governor and local officials, spare no expense," pledging federal support for the disaster response. With FEMA and other organizations providing emergency assistance, this destruction still begs the crucial question: Who is paying for it?

Governments, Insurers and Residents Share the Costs

As Business Insider reports, the federal government covers immediate response efforts, including fire containment and emergency shelters. FEMA offers displaced families hazard mitigation and financial aid, but these programs aren't designed to fully rebuild homes or businesses. For that, private insurers and residents are largely on their own.

However, insurance coverage is becoming a significant hurdle. Companies like Allstate, State Farm and Farmers have recently stopped covering in high-risk areas, citing rising disaster risks. Many residents are left relying on California's FAIR plan, the state's last-resort insurance program. This often results in higher premiums and less comprehensive coverage, leaving homeowners with steep out-of-pocket costs.

For uninsured residents, rebuilding isn't just challenging – it's financially crippling. And while state and local governments offer some support, long-term recovery largely depends on personal finances and private contributions.

It's not just the direct costs of rebuilding homes and infrastructure that add up. Indirect losses, like health care expenses, lost wages and business disruptions, compound the financial blow. The destruction of neighborhoods with high property values, such as Malibu, Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, further increases the economic toll.

The price of materials and labor is also expected to soar. Demand for contractors, plumbers, electricians and other specialists will outstrip supply, pushing costs higher. Furthermore, building supplies like steel and lumber may increase due to inflation and possible price gouging.

A Long Road to Recovery

The sheer scale of the damage has made the Los Angeles wildfires one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history, surpassing even the record-breaking wildfire seasons of recent years.

President Biden has promised that the federal government will cover all the fire response costs and give affected families a $770 one-time check. Still, rebuilding will take years and more money and planning will be needed. Local leaders are asking Congress for extra funding, but it's unclear when that will happen.

Image from Shutterstock
 Benzinga

BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT

Microsoft relaxes data center grip on OpenAI amid $500 billion joint venture



Updated Tue, January 21, 2025 
By Stephen Nellis and Krystal Hu

(Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT) on Tuesday said it has changed some key terms of a deal with OpenAI after the ChatGPT creator announced a joint venture with Oracle (ORCL) and Japan's SoftBank Group to build up to $500 billion of new AI data centers in the United States.

President Donald Trump gathered the leaders of the "Stargate" effort at the White House on Tuesday to announce the deal, saying it was intended to help keep the United States ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race, using chips from Nvidia (NVDA).

Since 2019, Microsoft has had arrangements with OpenAI that gave the Redmond, Washington-based company the exclusive right to build new computing infrastructure for OpenAI. Microsoft, in a blog post, said it has "approved OpenAI's ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models."

The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen which displays output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023

 (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File) 

That opened the door for OpenAI to work with Oracle.

A person familiar with the deal said that Stargate is a joint venture structured as new entity in which OpenAI has an equity stake, governance rights and operational control. It will have a separate board appointed by the founding members and its own CEO, this person said. The venture will also have other investors including United Arab Emirates firm MGX.

Microsoft, along with Nvidia and Arm, will be a "technology partner" in the new venture, but is not listed as an equity funder. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is will be the entity's board chairman, according to a statement from OpenAI posted on social media site X.

But Microsoft said that it still retains the exclusive right to offer OpenAI's API - technology shorthand for application programming interface, which is the main way that software developers and business customers buy OpenAI's services. That means Oracle will not be able to host OpenAI's primary source of revenue.

Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft's statements.

Microsoft said it has "revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways" with OpenAI.

"The key elements of our partnership remain in place for the duration of our contract through 2030, with our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangements and our exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs all continuing forward," Microsoft said.

Microsoft also said "OpenAI recently made a new, large Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training," referring to Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Krystal Hu in Davos, Switzerland; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

SoftBank Joins OpenAI, Oracle in AI Pact Unveiled by Trump

Bloomberg

Stephanie Lai
Tue, January 21, 2025 

(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp., OpenAI, and Oracle Corp. are forming a $100 billion joint venture to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure, an effort unveiled with President Donald Trump aimed at speeding development of the emerging technology.

“We’re starting off with tremendous investment coming into our country at levels that nobody’s really ever seen before,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday.

The president was joined by SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. The joint venture will deploy $100 billion “immediately” and have a goal of increasing to “at least” $500 billion to build new infrastructure for OpenAI, including data centers and physical campuses, said Son, who will be the venture’s chairman.

Initial equity will come from SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and Abu Dhabi state investor MGX, with a buildout of the first computing system starting in Texas, SoftBank said. While SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners in the venture, SoftBank will be in charge of financing and OpenAI will oversee operations, it said. Arm Holdings Plc, Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. will provide technology, along with Oracle and OpenAI, it said.

Trump has signaled a wide-ranging approach to ensure US leadership in AI, with pledges to spur private-sector investment by accelerating the permit process and easing other regulations. Those efforts will be steered by tech industry leaders who’ve joined his administration, including incoming AI-crypto czar David Sacks and Elon Musk, who has emerged as one of the president’s closest advisers.


Shares of SoftBank jumped 9.7% in Tokyo on Wednesday, their biggest intraday rise since August, joining rallies in Nvidia, Oracle and Arm. Over 400 shares in the S&P 500 rose during US trading Tuesday, with the gauge up almost 1%, on expectations that Trump would unveil the new AI investment push.

The president said he would use emergency declarations and executive action to help ease construction projects, including through easier access to energy. During their remarks, Trump and the executives highlighted potential applications for AI in health and other fields that would fuel US economic growth.

“AI holds incredible promise for all of us, for every American,” Ellison said.

Still, the actual scope of new commitments remained unclear.

Son visited Mar-a-Lago just last month to announce that SoftBank would spend $100 billion over the coming presidential term, and Tuesday’s announcement was drawn from that effort, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ellison said some of the data centers being considered for the project were already under construction, and OpenAI has also already extensively outlined plans to invest in AI infrastructure.

Two weeks before taking office, Trump announced a $20 billion investment from Dubai-based billionaire Hussain Sajwani for new data centers across the US. On Monday, shortly after his swearing-in, he rescinded AI guardrails imposed by Joe Biden and signed a series of measures to boost US energy development to meet a surge in power demand from data centers.

But skepticism remains about whether the initiative — dubbed “Stargate” by the companies — actually amounts to a dramatic increase from previous plans. Last month’s announcement from Son stirred questions over where SoftBank would get the capital to fund its initiative. Bloomberg previously reported that SoftBank might tap hyperscalers in a project financing scheme and leverage tens of billions of dollars into hundreds of billions of dollars. The Japanese tech investor had ¥3.8 trillion ($25 billion) in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of September.

SoftBank may need to put up around $25 billion to $30 billion for its share in this particular project, said Kirk Boodry, an analyst with Astris Advisory. “We expect they will be able to pull in limited partners (likely Middle Eastern money as they did with Vision Fund) whilst asset sales are very likely on the agenda,” he said in a note to investors. “SoftBank can afford it.”

Over the longer-term, however, this may lead to calls for higher yields on future SoftBank bond issues — a key source of funding — because of the rising strain on the Japanese investor’s finances, said Takashi Fujiwara, head of fixed income management and chief fund manager at Resona Asset Management Co.


Since winning a second term, Trump has cozied up to Silicon Valley, with prominent executives including Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai joining him at the US Capitol for his swearing-in ceremony on Monday.

OpenAI’s Altman has spent months trying to form a global coalition among government and industry leaders to support boosting the supply of chips, energy and data center capacity to support the development of AI. The company also pitched the Biden administration on the need for massive data centers that use as much power as entire cities.

SoftBank previously invested in OpenAI’s most recent fundraising round. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told Bloomberg News last month that it was drawn to SoftBank because the company has “access to lots of capital” and is prepared to invest that money, including “in areas like power and data centers.”

In an interview on Fox News late Tuesday, Ellison noted Stargate has been in the works “for a long time.” Construction is already underway on the first such data centers in Texas, Ellison said, and they’ll be turned over to Altman — and presumably OpenAI — “to start training their next model.”


“The scale of this investment obviously is huge,” Altman said. “And what I think that says about the likely progress of the technology, at least what all of us believe, is correspondingly huge.”

Cloud infrastructure providers like Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc., and Oracle have been racing to expand computing capacity by constructing new data centers. Oracle has already committed billions to build out new data centers — the company is expected to double its capital expenditures this fiscal year to over $14 billion, in large part due to these projects.

--With assistance from Jackie Davalos, Rachel Metz, Min Jeong Lee and Takahiko Hyuga.

(Updates with share reaction, background and analyst commentary)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

‘Horrible look’: Crypto lobby reels from Trump’s ‘memecoin’

· Mark Humphrey/AP

Jasper Goodman and Declan Harty

Politico 

Sun, January 19, 2025 




President-elect Donald Trump and his family are using the final days before he is sworn in as the 47th president to launch a new cryptocurrency product.

It isn’t welcome news to everyone in the crypto industry.

The digital assets business is poised to be a big winner in the second Trump administration, with Republicans vowing to advance policy changes that could boost the sector — and help it overcome longstanding concerns about its legitimacy. But Trump’s move on Friday to introduce a so-called memecoin — a crypto token with no real-world value that traders can invest in — has triggered alarm among investors and industry representatives in Washington that the new coin will provide ammunition to critics who accuse crypto of being rife with fraud and risk to consumers.


“It’s absolutely preposterous that he would do this,” said Nic Carter, founding partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures who describes himself as an “avowed and explicit” Trump supporter. “They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch.”

The concern illustrates the risk Trump is taking by launching a new crypto product just days before his inauguration. Memecoins — a class of crypto sometimes referred to as “shitcoins” that includes digital assets with names like Dogecoin and Fartcoin — are speculative assets that are highly volatile by nature. If investors lose money on the coin, it could become a liability for both Trump and the crypto sector.

The new product is also a clear signal that Trump and his family are willing to take on new business opportunities, even while he is in office, in an area that could directly benefit from friendly policies enacted by his own administration or a GOP-controlled Congress. Trump vowed ahead of his first term that there would be “no new deals” while he was in office. Now, his eldest sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — are starting their own crypto company, World Liberty Financial, which drew similar concerns from crypto advocates like Carter during the campaign.


A Trump-owned company owns 80 percent of the memecoin’s total supply, according to its website.

“It’s awful,” said one Washington lobbyist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive dynamics within the sector. “This is a horrible look for the industry already trying to make the case that we’re not a bunch of hucksters, scammers and fraudsters.”

The coin has already become a target for Democrats. Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), a crypto critic on the House Financial Services Committee, said Trump “continues to make clear he will not let detriments to his supporters or ethics stand in the way of enriching himself."


Still, even those who are concerned about Trump’s new coin don’t expect it to meaningfully impede the policy wins the crypto sector is in line to achieve. Trump has issued other crypto products in the past, and Republicans on Capitol Hill are gung-ho about advancing a regulatory overhaul that may boost its growth.

Lawmakers and advocates in Washington are on the brink of taking major steps that could help legitimize crypto. Republicans are poised to form new subcommittees and working groups on Capitol Hill that will focus on digital assets and they have pledged to pass a slate of industry-friendly legislation, including a crypto-backed regulatory overhaul that would shield firms from the enforcement crackdown they faced during the Biden years.

Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Trump’s son, Eric Trump, touted the coin on X Saturday, writing that he is “extremely proud of what we continue to accomplish in crypto.”

“We are just getting started!” he wrote.

Trump’s memecoin has taken off since debuting late Friday night. By 6:15 p.m. ET on Sunday, the token had risen to $44.95 — making it the 24th most valuable token in the world with a fully diluted value of more than $45 billion, according to CoinGecko, which tracks crypto data. And major crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Binance were moving to add it onto their platforms. Kraken, another major crypto trading venue, added the memecoin for trading Saturday afternoon.

The Trump push into memecoins accelerated Sunday when Melania Trump announced on social media her own, called MELANIA. Trump’s token fell in trading shortly thereafter.

Memecoins have long traded in crypto markets, with Dogecoin perhaps the best-known example. Launched as a joke, the crypto has exploded in popularity over the years, with its price often riding on the whims of its backers — the best known of which is Elon Musk.

Yet, many others have fallen flat. And while the Securities and Exchange Commission has waged a sweeping crusade against many of the crypto market’s biggest players, the Wall Street regulator has largely stayed away from the high-flying corner of crypto where memecoins trade, given questions about its authority over the tokens, said Marc Fagel, a former SEC official who previously led its San Francisco office.

“Is [it] healthy to have so much money tied up in what are essentially pyramid schemes?” Fagel said. “Of course not. But what are the tools to prevent that? We don’t have a lot of legal tools to prevent people from doing things that are really dumb with their money.”

Whether the Trump memecoin’s surge can last — and for how long — is unclear.

Carter said the token could end up sticking around for longer than others because of Trump. In the stock market, shares in the president-elect’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, have similarly risen despite lingering questions about the Truth Social parent’s future prospects. But “at the end of the day,” Carter added, “there’s no fundamentals to this thing.”

“It’s going to bite a lot of people in the ass — including people who believe in crypto,” a financial industry executive, who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said of the Trump memecoin. “But nothing ever seems to hurt him.”

Trump coin and Melania coin are 'gambling tokens': Anthony Scaramucci




Brian Sozzi · Executive Editor

Yahoo Finance
Tue, January 21, 2025 

HOOD+3.84%
DJT-11.09%
DJTWW-14.11%
BTC-USD+3.99%
MELANIA-USD-47.63%


New meme coins from President Trump and first lady Melania Trump could leave retail investors in a bad place.

"It's a gambling token. It's a meme coin," Anthony Scaramucci told Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Our society is always going to have gambling. Our society is always going to have smoking and alcohol. But he's the leader of our country, and he does represent something to the rest of these countries, at least the institution of the presidency once did. So I don't like it."

The Skybridge Capital founder said retail investors could be left "holding the bag" on both coins amid volatile swings in value.


Trump surprised the crypto community this past Friday by announcing the debut of Trump coin. Officially called Trump (TRUMP-OFFICIAL-USD), the slogan for the coin is "Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!"

The crypto venture was put together by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump organization. CIC Digital and its affiliates own 80% of the supply of the Trump coin. New tokens will be released gradually over the next three years. The affiliates will be paid trading revenue as the tokens are sold.

On the eve of Trump's inauguration, Melania's coin (MELANIA-USD) debuted.

CCC - CoinMarketCap•USD

TRUMP OFFICIAL USD (TRUMP-OFFICIAL-USD)

FollowView Quote Details


42.39
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(+26.75%)
As of 5:40:00 AM UTC. Market Open.
TRUMP-OFFICIAL-USDMELANIA-USD
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In other words, the Trump family stands to profit from the presidency.

Trump coin quickly rose to a market cap of $73 billion in about 48 hours, surpassing DOGE as the largest meme coin. The market cap of the crypto has since dropped to $7.3 billion from its launch, according to CoinMarketCap. Melania coin is trading at a market cap of $732 million.
Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi (left) with Skybridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"In our view, the launch of a meme coin by the biggest political figure in the world is a massive paradigm shift in the way U.S. and rest of the world would approach crypto. It signifies a new regulatory era, where governments see crypto as a technology to reach out to the masses directly," Bernstein digital assets analyst Gautam Chhugani wrote.

"We have seen this in U.S, Argentina and even in Canada, where the right wing political side has leaned in favor of Bitcoin/crypto."

Scaramucci had a brief tenure as the White House communications director during Trump's first term. But the hedge fund founder has since settled back in at Skybridge and became a fierce critic of Trump and his inner circle.

He has also positioned Skybridge to cash in on the soaring popularity of crypto.

In 2021, the firm launched the Skybridge Bitcoin Fund. Its aim is to provide affluent investors with an institutional vehicle to gain exposure to bitcoin.

d to comment on whether he will be launching a new crypto fund. But he said his alternative coin fund at Skybridge has "several $100 million" in it after an "exceptional" year in 2024.

Meanwhile, Scaramucci recently predicted bitcoin hitting $170,000 this year. The cryptocurrency currently trades at $109,000 after a stunning surge post-election.

"I'm bullish," Scaramucci said.

—

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and on LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.

TikTok Users Are Calling Out Donald Trump’s Hypocrisy After the 12-Hour US Ban

Maggie Clancy

 SheKnows
Sun, January 19, 2025

On the evening of January 18, TikTok users in the U.S. found themselves in social media limbo as they got their last scrolls in before the ban set in. Opening the app, they were greeted with two cryptic messages. The first promised that TikTok was working on restoring service quickly, while the second had an eerie addendum: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.”

Just a little over 12 hours later, TikTok was back. A new message congratulated users for their patience, saying, “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.

A feel-good moment orchestrated by a returning savior leader? Not quite. While some users happy to see the return of the app and some of its recent favorites like Spencer Pratt posting as soon as it was back up, many TikTok users were quick to take to Reddit with their receipts, blasting through any attempt at rewriting history.

“Remember,” one user began. “Trump started this in 2020 with an Executive Order… He created this problem.” They weren’t exaggerating. Back in August 2020, an in-office President Trump threatened to ban TikTok outright, citing vague national security concerns. Users shared screenshots ofheadlines from that summer, with dominating declarations like, “Trump says he’s banning TikTok in the U.S.” What began as a legally questionable executive order to ban the app ended up being dismissed by the courts.

Now, with political theater in full swing, many users see these fresh TikTok developments as little more than a self-serving act.

“The message is so dystopian,” another frustrated commenter weighed in. “He’s not even president yet, but now he’s swooping in like some savior? This feels so suspicious and makes me not even want to be on the app.” Echoes of distrust reverberated through the threads, with some drawing attention to Meta’s recent decision to eliminate fact-checking on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. “I don’t trust any of it,” another user concluded. “State-run media feels like the next step.”

Elon Musk isn’t off the hook either, with X (formerly Twitter) adding to the digital chaos. Musk’s erratic leadership at X, along with Zuckerberg’s history of fostering misinformation and propaganda — like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal that heavily influenced the 2016 presidential election — is sparking serious concern. Many are questioning whether TikTok might shift from a platform for creativity, small businesses, and activists to organize to a tool for blatant propaganda.

While Trump might be eager to recast himself as the steward of free speech, many aren’t buying it — or all that trusting of the post-ban form of TikTok.

‘This Was All a Stunt’: TikTok Trolled for Coming Back Online Hours After Shutdown

Corbin Bolies
Sun, January 19, 2025 

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty


TikTok announced it would restore access to the app to more than 170 million Americans on Sunday, hours after President-elect Donald Trump promised to grant its parent company a short reprieve from a national ban.

In a note posted to X, it thanked Trump for agreeing not to enforce the ban.

“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service,” it wrote from its policy X account. “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”

TikTok completed its effusive praise for Trump in a notice to users when they open the app. “Thanks for your patience and support,” the notice read. “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”

The move came after Trump wrote he would sign an executive order on Monday delaying the enforcement of a law that demands ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based owner, sell the app over national security concerns. He also promised tech companies there would be “no liability” should they restore access to the app and its services before his order was signed.

“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” he wrote.

A solution he proposed was a joint venture between the U.S. and “the current owners and/or new owners,” allowing the platform to stay active. “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up,” he wrote. “Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok.”

TikTok said on Sunday it “will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

Users were split under the post over its lavish praise of the president-elect. Some lauded Trump for his public efforts in getting the app back online while others blasted the app for capitulating to a politician who initially wanted it banned years ago.

“this was all a stunt to make trump look good,” one poster wrote.

“It’s been less than 24 hours and you’re already coming back? Y’all have no shame,” another poster responded. “All of this has just been a wasted attempt to try to make Trump look better.”

TikTok’s brief shutdown blasted as likely ‘deliberate PR stunt’ to create ‘sense of panic’

Thomas Barrabi
Sun, January 19, 2025 

TikTok ban

TikTok’s decision to shut the app down for barely 12 hours – only to restore access to the China-owned app on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump chimed in – appeared to be a PR stunt meant to stoke a public outcry, policy experts told The Post.

“TikTok’s early shutdown either came down to corporate incompetence or a deliberate PR stunt to encourage a manufactured sense of panic,” said Joel Thayer, a DC-based tech lawyer and president of the Digital Progress Institute. “Given it’s waffling, I’m assuming it’s the latter.”

The popular video-sharing app pulled the plug for all US users late Saturday night but began restoring service Sunday afternoon after Trump vowed to “save” TikTok through an executive order Monday that would delay enforcement of the divestiture law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell its stake.

The company thanked Trump “for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties.”

However, the Biden administration had already said it would not enforce the law, and Trump previously signaled ahead of the shutdown that he was against the ban and would “most likely” issue the executive order.

TikTok came back online Sunday after a 12-hour shutdown. Christopher Sadowski

The company’s leadership has acted as “an unsympathetic and disingenuous broker” in its dealings with Congress and the public over the last several years, Thayer said.

“The truth is that, even before Congress enacted the law, the US has told TikTok how to fix its blatant national security concerns for over 5 years and the company did nothing,” he added. “Now, after it attempted to bring bogus First Amendment claims to delay the law’s enforcement and on the eve of its ban, it wants a pity party.”

Under the divestiture law, app store operators like Google and Apple face penalties of $5,000 per user if they allow new downloads of the Bytedance-owned app after the Jan. 19 deadline. Service providers like Oracle and Akamai also faced lesser liability for supporting the app’s operation.

As written, the law did not require TikTok to go dark for people who had already downloaded it on their phones, or nor did it ban Americans from accessing the app.

A TikTok representative declined further comment and pointed to the company’s earlier statement.

Searches for TikTok yielded no results in Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App store as of 2:45 pm ET – a sign that the US tech giants still weren’t willing to risk massive penalties outlined in the law, even after Trump’s statement.

Google declined comment on the situation. A message in Apple’s App Store said the company was “obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates.”

Oracle and Akamai representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“This may be a game for TikTok, but it isn’t a game for Apple and Google,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of “Countering China’s Great Game. “They need to comply with the law, regardless of TikTok’s shenanigans.”

“The law that Congress passed and the Supreme Court upheld requires Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores if it is still owned and controlled by a foreign adversary today – which it is,” Sobolik added.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to attend Trump’s inauguration. Getty Images

Trump said he would “like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.”

“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up [sic],” Trump said. “Without US approval, there is no TikTok.”

TikTok said it would “work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

Despite Trump’s assurances, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously warned that the liabilities could amount to $850 billion, told service providers to think twice about ignoring the law.

“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs,” Cotton wrote on X. “Think about it.”

TikTok still wasn’t available in app stores as of Sunday afternoon. Getty Images

Cotton and fellow Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts had earlier said there was “no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date.”

“For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” the senators said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, also threw cold water on the notion that TikTok could come back without adhering to the law’s requirement that its parent company ByteDance divest.

“I think we will enforce the law,” Johnson told NBC News.

The Biden White House had previously referred to TikTok’s threat to go dark as a “stunt.”

“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday,” outgoing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this week.

TikTok said its service providers had received necessary assurances from Trump. REUTERS

Congress passed the divestiture law with overwhelming bipartisan support due to concerns that TikTok essentially functioned as a spyware and propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party – facilitating everything from mass data collection on Americans to subtle manipulation of public opinion through its algorithm.

TikTok has denied wrongdoing. The company repeatedly said it would not sell, even as the deadline approached. Chinese government officials vowed to block any forced sale.

The company unsuccessfully argued that the divestiture law violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court’s nine justices unanimously ruled against TikTok and ByteDance.

“Unless and until TikTok is no longer controlled by Beijing, the national security threat that motivated the divestiture law hasn’t been addressed,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.”

As The Post reported, some so-called “TikTok refugees” flocked to China-owned alternative RedNote ahead of the ban – even as experts warned that it carried even greater security risks.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Was the whole TikTok drama a bait-and-switch to make Trump look good?

Rhian Lubin and John Bowden

THE INDEPENDENT UK
Sun, January 19, 2025


Political commentators have suggested that the drama surrounding TikTok is a “scam” to make President-elect Donald Trump “look good” after he has vowed to save it.

The Chinese-owned social media app went dark in the U.S. on Saturday night and posted a message at about 10.30 p.m. Eastern time saying: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

The Biden administration blasted TikTok’s statement as a “stunt” in a statement on Saturday.

And on Sunday morning, Trump vowed to issue an executive order on Monday, the day of his inauguration, to give the app’s parent company ByteDance more time to find a buyer. Early Sunday afternoon, TikTok announced it was “in the process of restoring service” to the app — and thanked Trump for his support.

“We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” it said in a statement. “It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

Skeptics have highlighted how Trump was the one who initially called for the controversial Chinese-owned social media app to be banned in 2020. But since Trump’s following on TikTok grew — he has now amassed 14.8 million followers — and he hinted it helped to clinch the election, the president-elect has changed his tune.

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points,” Trump said in December. “And there are those that say TikTok had something to do with that.”

Trump signed an executive order to impose sanctions on TikTok in August 2020 (REUTERS)

“This TikTok scam by Trump is really something,” Ron Filipowski, a defense attorney and editor-in-chief of the left-leaning MeidasTouch news outlet said. “In a few days, we will be hearing from Trump about how he ‘saved Tik Tok’ & ‘brought it back.’ He literally created the problem by calling for a ban. Rs pass a law. It gets banned. It goes dark for a day or 2, then Trump ‘saves’ it.”

Journalist Aaron Rupar said that Trump now has the big tech companies “working on his behalf.”

“Trump hated TikTok (because China) until it helped him win an election (as even he acknowledges) and now he’s going to save it and take a victory lap,” Rupar said. “So he’ll have X, TikTok, Insta, and Facebook all working on his behalf. That’s a big difference between now and 2017.”

The message U.S. TikTok users were greeted with when the app went dark 

(Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Heath Mayo, founder of the conservative group Principles First, added: “Trump got China to place what amounts to a front-page ad on the phone of every American on TikTok. Selling out US national security to promote himself as some savior. Surprise, surprise.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Ct) said the move by Trump was “terrifying.”

“TikTok tucking itself in with Trump. Twitter under control of the White House. Facebook making major changes to placate MAGA, doing PR campaign to align w Trump,” Murphy wrote in a post on X. “Does everyone not see what’s happening here and how terrifying this is.”

Others shared dismay at the idea that Trump can effectively void a federal law. “I’m trying, and I hope other people will try, to hold onto the simple notion that a US president cannot simply declare a federal law that was passed last year and literally upheld this week to be a nullity—even if it’s a not-so-hot law,” writer and lawyer Luppe B. Luppen said in a post on BlueSky. “The Congress is the body that can amend or repeal federal laws.”

On August 6, 2020, Trump issued an executive order to impose sanctions on TikTok. “The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security,” Trump said in the order.

It called for ByteDance to divest its U.S. interests or face sanctions, but Trump’s effort to ban the app was then blocked by a federal judge.

Trump has thrown his support behind the app more recently 

(Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Since then, he has pledged support for the social media giant, even inviting TikTok’s CEO to his inauguration.

The Independent has contacted the Trump transition team for comment.

Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz defended the president-elect on Sunday.

He said that Trump was working in “real time” with tech companies to reach an agreement for new US ownership of TikTok — something a number of his allies, including Canada’s Kevin O’Leary, have also been at work seeking to make a reality.

Waltz also indicated that it was possible for TikTok to remain under Chinese ownership, albeit with “firewalls” (such as Americans’ data being stored in US-based servers) to guard against perceived national security threats.

Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union whether that meant "capitulating" to China by accepting a deal wherein the app was not sold, Waltz issued a denial.

“No, no, no,” he told Bash. “Both can be true at the same time. TikTok can continue to exist, and whether that’s in American hands, owned by an American company, or whether the data and algorithms are fully protected from Chinese interference, there’s a number of...formulas this can take.”

Team Trump Admits It Doesn’t Mind China Running TikTok After All

Maurício Alencar

DAILY BEAST
Sun, January 19, 2025 

CNN via x/@brianstelter


One of Donald Trump’s close allies let slip that the social media giant TikTok could operate in the U.S. while remaining in the hands of its current Chinese ownership.

Mike Waltz, who is set to become Trump’s national security adviser after his inauguration on Monday, told CNN that the president-elect’s team were exploring ways to get the app back online after its blackout on Sunday.

“We’re working literally real time, working with various tech companies, to get it back online and buy some time to one, save it, but protect Americans data and protect Americans from any type of foreign interference,” he told CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash.

The app switched off for some 170 million Americans after the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that banned TikTok due to its alleged links to the Chinese government.


The China-based technology firm ByteDance, which owns TikTok, was given until January 19 to sell the US version of the platform, but Trump has vowed to offer the company a 90-day extension to settle the controversial issue.




Waltz surprised viewers when he suggested the app would not have to be sold after all all.

“It is a fantastic app. It’s something that 170 million Americans enjoy, and we’re confident that we can save Tiktok, but also protect Americans data and protect them from influence, whether that’s an outright sale, whether that’s some mechanism of firewalls to make sure that the data is protected here on US soil,” he said.

Bash appeared to be in shock over Waltz’s revelation that the Trump administration could allow the app to be owned by ByteDance as she questioned him on whether the president-elect was “totally capitulating to China.”

“It’s not capitulating at all,” he said. “Again, we can do both. Both can be true at the same time. TikTok can continue to exist, and whether that’s an American hands owned by an American company, or whether the data and the algorithms are fully protected from Chinese interference, there’s a number of formulas this could take.”

“Let’s give the president some time to make that decision,” he added.

Some of that time will doubtless be spent with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who recently praised Trump in a video message and will be in attendance at Inauguration Day in Washington DC.

Trump on Sunday confirmed himself that he was working to get the app back online for his inauguration on Monday.

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark! I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.

“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.”

Trump made the case that a U.S. entity could purchase 50% of the platform to continue its operation.

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture,” he said. “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions.”

Trump has given new life to TikTok in the US...but can he actually save the app from its ban?

Katie Hawkinson
Tue, January 21, 2025 

President Donald Trump signed an order extending TikTok’s availability in the U.S. for 75 days. Can he actually save the app? (AP)


On Sunday, the 170 million Americans who use TikTok saw the same message when they opened the app.

“As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S."

Now, TikTok is operational in the U.S. following a short shutdown that began Saturday evening. The closure came after Congress passed a law last year requiring TikTok to be sold to an American buyer by January 19 or be banned from US app stores. The Supreme Court even ruled in favor of the law, citing threats to national security.

Trump has claimed he wants to “save” TikTok and that the decision on its ban is “ultimately” up to him, despite the fact that the law is already in existence.


“It ultimately goes up to me, so you’re going to see what I’m going to do,” Trump told CNN. “Congress has given me the decision, so I’ll be making the decision.”

Can Trump actually save TikTok?

It’s unclear.

However, Stephen Carter, a Yale University law professor and Bloomberg opinion columnist, published an op-ed Tuesday explaining Trump could save TikTok using “prosecutorial discretion” to negate the consequences for violating a law.

“True, as a legal matter, a president can’t simply suspend the operation of a duly enacted law,” Carter wrote. “As a practical matter, however, Trump will stand in a long line of chief executives who have used prosecutorial discretion to achieve the same end.”

Prosecutorial discretion is the president’s ability to not enforce a law by instructing his justice department to not prosecute those who violated it. Carter describes it as “the all-but-unreviewable freedom of the Oval Office’s occupant to decide which laws to enforce, when, and how.”

The Supreme Court has even said that the decision of whether or not to enforce a law through prosecution is “a decision which has long been regarded as the special province of the Executive Branch,” Carter noted.

The current law banning TikTok would impose a $5,000 fine on companies — such as Apple or Google — for each user accessing TikTok through their services. If Trump exercises prosecutorial discretion, Carter explained, he can direct his administration to not levy the fines and essentially not enforce the law.


TikTok credited “Trump’s efforts” for returning service in the U.S. after it went dark for a few hours when the ban started (TikTok)

Trump already issued an executive order noting that companies will not be penalized for keeping the app online for the next 75 days.

It’s also unclear to what extent Trump will use prosecutorial discretion. He also said he wants TikTok to be 50 percent U.S.-owned, despite its parent company ByteDance giving no indication they plan to sell.


"I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up."

Trump even said on Sunday he changed his mind on TikTok (after initially wanting to ban it in his first term) because he used it in his campaign.

“As of today, TikTok is back,” Trump told his supporters at a pre-inauguration victory rally. “So, you know, I did a little TikTok thing. We have a guy...he’s a young kid, like 21 years old, and we hired this guy, and I went on Tiktok. Can you believe what I’ll do to win an election?”

“So I like Tiktok,” he added.

But not everyone is happy with Trump’s decision — including some of his Republican allies.

Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Pete Ricketts said Sunday there is no legal basis for an extension on TikTok’s operation in the U.S.

"Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date," the senators said. "For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China."

As TikTok prepares to shut down, billionaire Frank McCourt wants to buy it to radically change how the internet works

Paolo Confino
Sat, January 18, 2025 

FORTUNE

At the moment, Frank McCourt is the only bidder who has made a public offer to purchase TikTok.


As Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley sit on the edge of their seats awaiting the fate of TikTok after the Supreme Court upheld a law banning it if wasn’t sold by Jan. 19, one Boston billionaire is eyeing an “incredibly serendipitous” opportunity to buy the app from owner ByteDance and reconfigure the inner workings of the internet.

Last week, after several months of public interest, Frank McCourt and a group of coinvestors, including Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary, sent ByteDance a formal offer to buy TikTok. Leading the bid is McCourt’s internet advocacy group Project Liberty. McCourt said he currently values TikTok—without its famed algorithm—at $20 billion. As of December 2023, the entirety of ByteDance’s global operations was estimated to be worth somewhere around $268 billion.

On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the bipartisan law that forces TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations by Jan. 19 or be banned because of national security concerns. At the same time, President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office a day later, is mulling his options on how to stall a shutdown of the app, which seems imminent. Trump officials are reportedly drafting an executive order that would delay enforcement of a ban by either 60 or 90 days, according to the Washington Post.

However, owning the crown jewel of the internet’s youngest generations isn’t the endgame for McCourt. He has his gaze fixed on a broader goal: fundamentally altering how user data is handled on the internet. In technical terms, McCourt wants to build a decentralized version of the internet where individual users, rather than tech companies, own the reams of data spawned by their online lives. Users would then opt-in to having their data collected by certain companies, rather than having that be the norm, as it is on most websites and apps.
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“The problem with our current Internet technology is that the data is being taken from us, scraped, stolen—call it what you will—as opposed to it being permissioned by the users, and it's being taken from us through different surveillance devices,” McCourt told Fortune.

McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and scion of a wealthy family of Boston industrialists, has long been a critic of the current business model of the internet, and social media companies in particular. In 2021, he founded Project Liberty as a think-tank- investment-vehicle hybrid to begin researching ways to wrest user data from tech companies’ control. He considers their constant hoovering up of data, which then gets sold and resold to advertisers, to be an invasion of privacy that places too much power in the hands of a select few Big Tech companies.

His Project Liberty envisions a model for social media in which it is users, not tech companies, that own their social graph—the complex web of data points used to map out their online personas and lives. It’s a novel concept that would require tech companies to fork over the secret sauce that allows them to micro-target their billions of users for digital advertisers. In McCourt’s ideal world, a user who owns their social graph could allow certain advertisers or other users access to it. For example, someone with a passion for fine wines might share that with a platform that would then tailor their social-media feed with videos of Burgundys, Barolos, wine influencers, and tours of lavish cellars around the globe.

Project Liberty has already piloted this idea on a small scale with MeWe, a social media also-ran that has roughly 20 million users and both free and paid offerings. McCourt’s company, McCourt Global, led MeWe’s Series A in 2022 with a $15 million investment. Only about one million of MeWe’s users currently use McCourt’s privacy-forward version of the app.

Buying TikTok and access to its 170 million U.S. users would serve as a proving ground for McCourt’s long-held ambitions to create an internet free of its current digital, corporate Big Brother.

“It would really catalyze this alternative internet because it would compress timelines and create scale very quickly,” McCourt said in an interview before the offer to ByteDance was made public.

Any deal to pry TikTok from the hands of an unwilling seller is already complex enough, even more so if they plan to upend the plumbing of the internet. But the complications don’t stop there. In the event TikTok does get sold, the buyer will almost certainly be getting a company with limited tech of its own. A potential TikTok sale would likely not include its coveted algorithm, which serves up video after video to audiences, because social media algorithms are subject to strict export controls in China. McCourt and O’Leary have both said they do not want or need the algorithm for their new vision for TikTok.

“Anybody that might be considering buying U.S. TikTok and is depending on the Chinese algorithm is just wasting their time,” McCourt said.

The pair's offer would include an acquisition of the TikTok brand, its user base, and the app’s vast content library of everything that’s been posted on the site, O’Leary said. Their new TikTok would build its own algorithm, McCourt added. Project Liberty would need to build a “clean tech stack” that is both powerful enough to support the countless hours of TikTok videos users watch and insulated from any possible Chinese interference so as to comply with the law.

But removing the algorithm from TikTok is not just a technical footnote in the sale. The algorithm is the beating heart of TikTok. Without it, users would still be able to post content, but they wouldn’t be served up the endless stream of videos perfectly tailored to their interests—everything from cake frosting videos to slam dunk compilations to the ever-popular “get ready with me” content.

“Essentially, you would get the platform, but you would rip out the engagement algorithm, effectively disconnecting all the important dots within the system that make content discovery even possible,” said Amir Kaltak, CEO of Own.App, a social media startup that also doesn’t collect data on users.

TikTok will remain an ad-based model, but having users opt-in to their interests will make ad spending more efficient, according to McCourt.

He estimates that in the event of a sale, the transition from the current iteration of TikTok to the new version would take approximately one year. In that case, TikTok would likely operate with an “off-the-shelf” algorithm that would keep the platform from shutting down completely, Kaltak said. Replicating the success of the original algorithm is a difficult task because the entirety of TikTok’s tech architecture is built for a centralized system, not the decentralized one McCourt envisions, he explained.

“You would have to gather the best data scientists you can get your hands on to make sense out of this huge chunk of data on user behavior in order to reconstruct a new algorithm that is going to match [the old one] and hopefully give them a great user experience,” Kaltak added. “That's essentially a lot of work.”

As a marquee tech company and one of the most popular social media platforms, the price of TikTok won’t be cheap. In addition to its investors, Project Liberty has secured a “significant commitment” on the debt side from one of the nation's largest banks, according to Project Liberty president Tomicah Tilleman. Investment bank Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis are advising Project Liberty in the transaction. Details of the offer were not released. Tilleman declined to comment on investors.

A major outstanding question is how many of TikTok’s current shareholders will want to roll their stock into a new McCourt-O’Leary led vehicle and how many will want to cash out, according to O’Leary. “We don't know what that mix is yet,” he said. “I'm assuming the majority of them, who are not stupid, want the upside we're going to offer them in the new vision of Tiktok.”

ByteDance’s U.S. investors include VC firms General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital and trading firm Susquehanna International Group.

Another significant hurdle to any deal is that ByteDance does not want to sell. In fact, it has vowed to fight tooth and nail to avoid being forced to do so. Project Liberty sent Bytedance its official proposal last week, the day before the start of the Supreme Court oral arguments on whether to uphold the ban. That timing wasn’t coincidental, said O’Leary. It was meant to neutralize any of ByteDance’s potential arguments that there were no legitimate offers for TikTok, he said.

“We were concerned that the justices were going into their considerations for the Friday hearing under the assumption that the company claimed there were no American buyers because the Chinese government was not going to sell the algorithm,” O’Leary said.

So far, ByteDance appears unmoved by McCourt and O’Leary’s play. Indeed, ByteDance is preparing for the app to shut down rather than begin negotiating a sale. The few comments that have trickled out from TikTok employees maintained the party line that no sale was happening, while brushing off any offers. “These billionaires who are going around saying they are going to buy TikTok are nothing but peacockers and masqueraders,” a TikTok employee told Puck.

TikTok did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

As with any major corporate asset rumored to be on the market, there is more than one bidder eyeing the chance to snap it up at a bargain price.

Last spring, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who now runs the Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm Liberty Strategic Capital, announced his intention to put together an investment group to buy TikTok. His interest, or at least his public interest, has waned since then.

Similarly, former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had a conversation about the logistics of training a new algorithm using large language models with a table of executives that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at an Allen & Co. dinner in March, according to the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Elon Musk, who already owns X, was an 11th hour candidate due to his support from the Chinese government. TikTok called that possibility “pure fiction.” Kotick declined to comment. Mnuchin and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Another notable threat to McCourt and O’Leary’s plans is the possibility that TikTok might not be sold at all. Trump’s nominee for solicitor general, John Sauer, submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking it to delay the deadline for a TikTok sale. As currently constructed, the law allows President Joe Biden to trigger a 90-day extension to the Jan. 19 deadline if TikTok is in the middle of negotiating a sale. Project Liberty is eager for the clause to be activated because it believes it can get a deal done in that time frame, according to Tilleman.

Enforcement of the ban will inevitably straddle two presidential administrations while remaining at the center of two of the country’s most pressing issues: national security and the brewing trade war with China. The national security issues that were the impetus for the law remain salient. However, TikTok’s importance to China as a source of national pride makes it an important bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Beijing that could encompass everything from tariffs to oil and natural gas, according to Frank Kelly, senior political advisor at global asset manager DWS.

“As President Trump has been coming out of the campaign, he's been thinking and talking internally about what they're calling a grand bargain with China,” Kelly said. “I have to think that whatever that bargain may be, this would have to be on the table as one of the things that could be included in it.”

Project Liberty is plotting its own grand bargain with Trump. “President Trump is good at deals and likes making deals. [McCourt] is good at deals and likes making deals,” Tilleman said.

But running in opposition to an incoming presidential administration’s priorities—even tangentially—could almost certainly spell the end of any TikTok bid, including McCourt and O’Leary’s. To press their case, O’Leary traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.

“Trump is going to get his wish,” O’Leary said. “He's going to keep the platform lit up. All he has to do is help us buy it.”

For now, the question for O’Leary and McCourt isn’t whether Trump wants to keep TikTok “lit up,” but rather if he’ll hand them the switch.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Meet Shou Zi Chew, the CEO leading TikTok as it fights a US ban

Katie Canales,Sarah Jackson,Lauren Edmonds
Sat, January 18, 2025 

BUSINESS INSIDER

Shou Zi Chew is the face of TikTok's effort to stay up and running in the US.Kin Cheung/AP

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is the company's public face, rallying its fans and testifying before Congress.


He went to Harvard Business School and interned at Facebook when it was a startup.


TikTok said it would go dark on Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring it to sell or face a ban.


TikTok is under a lot of pressure right now.

As US lawmakers worry the video-sharing platform, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses a danger to national security, TikTok is scrambling to fight a law requiring it be sold to a US owner by January 19 or else risk being banned in the country.

TikTok said it would "go dark" for American users on the scheduled deadline after the US Supreme Court upheld the law.

So, who's leading the company through this turbulent period?

That would be Shou Zi Chew, TikTok's CEO from Singapore, who got his start as an intern at Facebook.

Here's a rundown on TikTok's head honcho:

Chew worked for Facebook when it was still a startup.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, before he took his company public.Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

He earned his bachelor's degree in economics at the University College London before heading to Harvard Business School for his MBA in 2010.

While a student there, Chew worked for a startup that "was called Facebook," he said in a post on Harvard's Alumni website. Facebook went public in mid-2012.



Chew met his now-wife, Vivian Kao, via email when they were both students at Harvard.
Shou Zi Chew and Vivian Kao attend The 2022 Met Gala.Theo Wargo/WireImage

They are "a couple who often finish each other's sentences," according to the school's alumni page, and have three kids.

Chew was CFO of Xiaomi before joining Bytedance.
Shou Zi Chew and Xiaomi's CEO give thumbs up at the listing of Xiaomi at the Hong Kong Exchanges on July 9, 2018REUTERS/Bobby Yip

He became chief financial officer of the Chinese smartphone giant, which competes with Apple, in 2015. Chew helped secure crucial financing and led the company through its 2018 public listing, which would become one of the nation's largest tech IPOs in history.

He became Xiaomi's international business president in 2019, too.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Washington, DC on Tuesday, February 14, 2023.Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

Before joining Xiaomi, Chew also worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He also worked at investment firm DST, founded by billionaire tech investor Yuri Milner, for five years. It was during his time there in 2013 that he led a team that became early investors in ByteDance, as the Business Chief and The Independent reported.

For a while, Chew was both the CEO of TikTok and the CFO of its parent company, ByteDance.

ByteDance founder Zhang YimingZheng Shuai/VCG via Getty Images

Chew joined ByteDance's C-suite in March 2021, the first person to fill the role of chief financial officer at the media giant.

He was named CEO of TikTok that May at the same time as Vanessa Pappas was named COO. Bytedance founder and former CEO Zhang Yiming said at the time that Chew "brings deep knowledge of the company and industry, having led a team that was among our earliest investors, and having worked in the technology sector for a decade."


That November, it was announced that Chew would leave his role as ByteDance's CFO to focus on running TikTok.

TikTok's former CEO, Kevin Mayer, had left Walt Disney for the position in May 2020 and quit after three months as the company faced pressure from lawmakers over security concerns.

Some government officials in the US and other countries remain concerned that TikTok's user data could be shared with the Chinese government.

The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok divest its American business from ByteDance or risk being banned.Jacquelyn Martin, Pool

Donald Trump's administration issued executive orders designed to force ByteDance into divesting its TikTok US operations, though nothing ever happened.

President Biden signed an executive order in June 2021 that threw out Trump's proposed bans on the app.

Last year, the Biden administration demanded that TikTok divest its American business from its Chinese parent company or risk being banned in the US. In response, Chew said such a divestment wouldn't solve officials' security concerns about TikTok.

In a TikTok last March, Chew announced the company has amassed 150 million monthly active users in the US and broached the subject of the ban threats.

Chew took to TikTok to discuss the ban threats. TikTok

"Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok," he said. "Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you."

Chew testified before Congress that month about the company's privacy and data security practices.

Wall Street said his testimony didn't do much to help his case to keep TikTok alive in the US, though Chew seemed to win over many TikTok users, with some applauding his efforts and even making flattering fancam edits of him.

Now, Chew and TikTok are in the spotlight again as the company tries to stave off a looming potential ban.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday, March 23, 2023.

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The House of Representatives passed a bill on March 13 that would require any company owned by a "foreign adversary" to divest or sell to a US-based company within 180 days to avoid being banned in the US.

Chew put out a video response shortly after, asking users to "make your voices heard" and "protect your constitutional rights" by voicing opposition to lawmakers.

He called the vote "disappointing" and said the company has invested in improving data security and keeping the platform "free from outside manipulation."


"This bill gives more power to a handful of other social media companies," he added. "It will also take billions of dollars out of the pockets of creators and small businesses. It will put more than 300,000 American jobs at risk."

The Senate also passed the bill, and President Biden signed it into law in April.

In September, a hearing on the potential TikTok ban began in federal appeals court and in December, a three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law is constitutional.

On the heels of the bad news, Chew met with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago several days later.

Chew and Trump recently met.

Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Trump said in a press conference on the day they met that he has a "warm spot" for TikTok, which he has criticized in the past, because he says it helped him win over young voters in the 2024 election.

Also on the day of their meeting, TikTok asked the Supreme Court to block the law that requires it be sold to avoid a shutdown, arguing that it violates Americans' First Amendment rights.

Chew commended Trump while discussing the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the TikTok ban.

Shou Zi Chew praised President-elect Donald Trump in a TikTok video.

JIM WATSON/Getty Images

The US Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the law requiring the app's parent company, ByteDance, to divest its operations in the US or undergo a ban did not infringe on the First Amendment.

In response, Chew appeared in a video shared to TikTok's official account, during which he spoke about American TikTok users and thanked Trump.

"On behalf of TikTok and all our users across this country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," Chew said.


"This is a strong for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship," he added.

Trump also discussed the Supreme Court's decision on Friday with a Truth Social post.

"The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!

Chew plans to attend Trump's inauguration on Monday, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Business Insider.

When he's not fighting efforts to ban TikTok, Chew makes appearances at some pretty high-profile events.

Shou Zi Chew leaves Congress on March 23.

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

He's been seen at the Met Gala, and also posted about attending the 2023 Super Bowl and even Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

His hobbies include playing video games like Clash of Clans and Diablo IV, golfing, and reading about theoretical physics.

TikTok said the app will 'go dark' for American users on January 19.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew has made multiple appearances before Congress in the past year.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Following the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law, TikTok said in an X post it would "go dark" for American users at the deadline to sell unless Biden intervened.

"The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok's availability to over 170 million Americans," the post read. "Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19."