TikTok vs the U.S.A. | Reeling | 2
Business Wars
Wondery
4.6 • 13.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
TikTok scrambles to respond to President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring ByteDance sell the app to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. But the election of Joe Biden in November 2020 offers the company a brief reprieve. TikTok works to make a deal with the new administration, but reports come out that TikTok may not have been completely honest about the privacy of American user data, jeopardizing their status in the country yet again.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of business wars, TikTok versus the USA, early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:07.6 | Join Windry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:14.9 | It's summer 2020 in San Francisco, California. |
| 0:22.9 | Venture capitalist Doug Leone opens WhatsApp and hits the phone number of Bidant's CEO and founder, Zhang Yi Ming. |
| 0:30.0 | Zhang picks up after two rings. |
| 0:32.4 | He sounds tired. |
| 0:33.9 | Leone's not surprised. |
| 0:35.8 | President Donald Trump is threatening to ban TikTok in the United States. |
| 0:40.0 | TikTok is Zhang's baby, and he's been working around the clock figuring out how to save it. |
| 0:46.3 | Hey, Ming, good morning, night? |
| 0:49.0 | Not sure what time it is there. |
| 0:51.1 | How you doing? |
| 0:52.1 | Yeah, hi. |
| 0:53.4 | Good morning. |
| 0:58.2 | Well, how I am depends on what info you were able to get me. |
| 1:04.5 | Were you able to reach the White House? I was. I have some clarity on the situation, but I'm not sure you're going to like it. Leone is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which is a major investor in TikTok, |
| 1:10.3 | and he's also a high dollar donor to |
| 1:12.2 | Trump's re-election campaign. So Leon offered to reach out to the White House to understand what |
| 1:17.7 | they need to see in order to approve a potential sale of TikTok. Bottom line, the administration |
| 1:23.3 | is looking for a full sale. They don't want bite dance to have any ownership in TikTok. |
| 1:29.2 | I know we had hoped bite dance could stay on as a minority partner, but my source was |
| 1:34.6 | adamant that the White House won't find that acceptable. Zhang sighs, frustrated. |
... |
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