The TikTok CEO appeared before a U.S. Congressional committee on Thursday. He was interrogated on data security and user safety while arguing his own position that the massively popular video-sharing app shouldn’t be prohibited. The questions looms if TikTok should be sold to a U.S. company.
Shou Zi Chew’s testimony comes at a pivotal juncture for the business, which has 150 million American customers but is coming under growing pressure from American regulators. The larger geopolitical conflict between Beijing and Washington over trade and technology has engulfed TikTok and its parent firm ByteDance.
Republican Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers attacked the social media platform’s credibility in her opening remarks because of its close ties to Beijing. “Mr. Chew, you are here because the American people need the truth about the threat TikTok poses to our national and personal security,” McMorris Rodgers said. “TikTok has repeatedly chosen a path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation.”
TikTok has been pitching regulators on a $1.5 billion scheme called Project Texas, which sends all user data from the United States to domestic servers owned and maintained by software giant Oracle, in an effort to escape a ban. As part of the endeavor, access to American data is controlled by American staff members via a different organization called TikTok U.S. 1,500 individuals work for Data Security, which is administered separately from ByteDance and would be observed by third parties.
As of October, all fresh user data from Americans was kept domestically. According to Chew, the effort to remove all historical U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers began this month and is anticipated to be finished later this year.
“There are many misconceptions about our company and I’m very proud to come here and represent them and all our users in this country, “Chew told reporters before entering the hearing. In addition, he said, “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country.”
Chew joined ByteDance as the company’s first CFO in 2021. Two months later, as the Trump administration tried to force the sale of TikTok’s American assets, he was promoted to chief executive when Kevin Mayer, a former Disney executive, abruptly left the company after just three months.
More people have downloaded TikTok internationally than other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram combined.
Chew received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2010, and before Facebook went public in 2012, he interned there during the startup phase, giving him his first taste of life in the internet industry. After graduating from business school, Chew joined the Israeli-Russian Technology billionaire Yuri Milner’s venture capital company DST, where his proficiency in Mandarin allowed him to become a partner with a focus on China.
In 2012, before the team established TikTok, he would make his crucial trip to Zhang’s ByteDance as a result of which Chew and his partners invested in the firm the next year. Also, as chief financial officer of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer with ambitions to compete globally with Apple, he oversaw investments in the company.
As chief financial officer of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer with ambitions to compete globally with Apple, he oversaw investments in the company. He joined Xiaomi in 2015 at the age of thirty-two.
Three years later, the company went public after Chew assisted in securing the money that made it possible. Although its share performance has been inconsistent subsequently, at the time, this was one of China’s largest-ever initial public offerings in the technology sector. In 2019, he was appointed to lead the company’s global business.
The White House backed legislation that would effectively prohibit the app due to worries about the security of the 100 million Americans who use the popular video platform.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “The bottom line is that when it comes to potential threats to our national security, when it comes to the safety of Americans, when it comes to privacy, we’re going to speak out, and we’re going to be very clear about that, and the president has been over the last two years.” “And so we’re asking Congress to act, we’re asking Congress to move forward with this bipartisan legislation, the RESTRICT Act and we’re going to continue to do so.”
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