TikTok uses “Project Texas” to fool Americans twice

The Washington Post reported on 23 June that the White House may be preparing to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, despite they leaked data to the China government. A recent change has come from the Commerce Department. Its regulations appear to be aimed at allowing the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok’s “Project Texas” to continue operating in the U.S. TikTok announced “Project Texas” in March 2021, aiming to make TikTok stay in the U.S. According to Yahoo Finance, TikTok’s “Project Texas” is a 1.5 billion initiative that allows Americans to establish American confidence in TikTok’s operations. Under the plan, American operations are monitored by subsidiary TikTok U.S. Data Security. Oracle allows to review TikTok’s code and software. All U.S. data traffic moves through Oracle Cloud, and all data stores to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. However, a Congress hearing on TikTok’s data security in March 2023 raised fears of all Americans that their personal data has been leaked to the China government. Even though, the CEO Chew claimed that only the US controls US user data. Testimony confirmed that the CCP could access any data from TikTok, according to the court case of a former engineer from ByteDance. Therefore, the White House giving the green light to TikTok sparked concerns from the Congress. Members of Congress Rep. Mike Gallagher and Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter dated 23 June to the Secretary of the Commerce Department, raising concerns about the Commerce Department’s recently issued Final Rule amending the Securing the Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain (ICTS) rules, to seemingly lay the groundwork for TikTok’s sham mitigation proposal “Project Texas”. The letter wrote, “The Department’s changes to the language in the Final Rule from the proposed rule suggest the Commerce Department may use ICTS authority to authorise TikTok to implement “Project Texas”, and to authorise “other connected software applications” that pose national security threats to implement similar “mitigation” agreements.” On 27 June, the Select Committee on the CCP also tweeted a post saying, “In a Final Rule, the U.S. Commerce Department seemingly opened the door to permit Project Texas.” The committee would request the Commerce Department to clarify the Final Rule. It is crystal clear that TikTok is CCP’s spy software which is collecting Americans data. If the America government allows the TikTok’ Project Texas to operate in the U.S., American will be fooled twice by the CCP.