TikTok CEO Says ‘Project Texas’ to Allay US Security Concern
Hit video app TikTok is investing heavily to address US concerns about its data security and anticipates being able to deliver a satisfactory solution with partner Oracle Corp.
TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew said the company is working on an effort, called Project Texas, that will isolate sensitive data from its American users so that only staff in the US will have access. He called the effort “extremely difficult and expensive to build,” but aimed at the concerns of American officials.
“It's unprecedented. No company has attempted this,” Chew said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Wednesday. “I'm very confident that through the detailed discussions that we're going to have, we will come up with a solution that will reasonably address the national security concerns.”
TikTok has come under fire because employees in China, where parent ByteDance Ltd. is based, have been able to tap into US user data. Just this week, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau is “extremely concerned” that China's government could influence the app to control millions of users' data or software, and its recommendation algorithm -- which determines which videos users will see next.
Chew pushed back on the idea that a social media company would check citizenship before deciding who gets access to certain data.
“No consumer internet company that I know of organizes access to data by nationality,” he said.
Instead, he argued data controls should be geographic to ensure security.
“Only an entity of US residence will have access to a certain set of US-protected data,” he said of TikTok's strategy with Oracle, which would host the app's data.
TikTok is the crown jewel of ByteDance's app portfolio, an online repository of
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