<story><title>Oracle Wins Bid for TikTok in U.S.</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-drops-out-of-bidding-for-tiktoks-u-s-operations-11600039821</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rladd</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s what I am guessing it is:&lt;p&gt;- Bytedance retains some ownership and control of the app and the algorithms&lt;p&gt;- Oracle runs the entire back end on their infrastructure&lt;p&gt;- Oracle guarantees to the US government that no data is going back to China (because they control the release of the app and control the back end)&lt;p&gt;- This satisfies the USA&amp;#x27;s (supposed) national security concerns and also satisfies China because TikTok is not actually being &amp;quot;sold&amp;quot; to a US company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mike_d</author><text>If it was that simple, Google would have been the obvious choice. They have already started migrating to GCP and signed an $800 million dollar three year deal.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theinformation.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;tiktok-agreed-to-buy-more-than-800-million-in-cloud-services-from-google&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theinformation.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;tiktok-agreed-to-buy...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Oracle Wins Bid for TikTok in U.S.</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-drops-out-of-bidding-for-tiktoks-u-s-operations-11600039821</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rladd</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s what I am guessing it is:&lt;p&gt;- Bytedance retains some ownership and control of the app and the algorithms&lt;p&gt;- Oracle runs the entire back end on their infrastructure&lt;p&gt;- Oracle guarantees to the US government that no data is going back to China (because they control the release of the app and control the back end)&lt;p&gt;- This satisfies the USA&amp;#x27;s (supposed) national security concerns and also satisfies China because TikTok is not actually being &amp;quot;sold&amp;quot; to a US company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Fej</author><text>This is a fantastic idea - the only thing missing (that I see) is that Oracle would need to see the source code and verify that the checksum of the apps built from that code matches the downloads from the Google Play Store and App Store.&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the guarantee that no data is being sent to China is not airtight. Oracle could audit the app every time it gets an update and watch network traffic, but this would miss anything sent by code activated remotely after the fact. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t work for long, but the US government will look for any reason to deny this deal. I don&amp;#x27;t think Oracle will audit the app constantly anyway. Come to think of it, that could apply to the source code too, if the malicious code was extremely well hidden.</text></comment>