Normal view
- Tech – TIME
- ‘Big Money and High Quality People’: Stargate Joint Venture to Invest in U.S. AI Infrastructure
‘Big Money and High Quality People’: Stargate Joint Venture to Invest in U.S. AI Infrastructure
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.
“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.
Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024.
“This will be the most important project of this era,” said Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine.
“This is the beginning of golden age,” said Son, referencing Trump’s statement that the U.S. would be in a “golden age” with him back in the White House.
Son, a billionaire based in Japan, already committed in December to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years. He previously committed to $50 billion in new investments ahead of Trump’s first term, which included a large stake in the troubled office-sharing company WeWork.
While Trump has seized on similar announcements to show that his presidency is boosting the economy, there were already expectations of a massive buildout in data centers and electricity plants needed for the development of AI, which holds the promise of increasing productivity by automating work but also the risk of displacing jobs if poorly implemented.
Read More: 5 Predictions for AI in 2025
The initial plans for Stargate go back to the Biden administration. Tech news outlet The Information first reported on the project in March 2024. OpenAI has long relied on Microsoft data centers to build its AI systems, but it has increasingly signaled an interest in building its own data centers.
OpenAI wrote in a letter to the Biden administration’s Commerce Department last fall that planning and permitting for such projects “can be lengthy and complex, particularly for energy infrastructure.”
Other partners in the project include Microsoft, investor MGX and the chipmakers Arm and NVIDIA, according to separate statements by Oracle and OpenAI.
The push to build data centers predates Trump’s presidency. Last October, the financial company Blackstone estimated that the U.S. would see $1 trillion invested in data centers over five years, with another $1 trillion being committed internationally.
Those estimates for investments suggest that much of the new capital will go through Stargate as OpenAI has established itself as a sector leader with the 2022 launch of its ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the public imagination with its ability to answer complex questions and perform basic business tasks.
The White House has put an emphasis on making it easier to build out new electricity generation in anticipation of AI’s expansion, knowing that the United States is in a competitive race against China to develop a technology increasingly being adopted by businesses.
Read More: How China Is Advancing in AI Despite U.S. Chip Restrictions
Still, the regulatory outlook for AI remains somewhat uncertain as Trump on Monday overturned the 2023 order signed by then-President Joe Biden to create safety standards and watermarking of AI-generated content, among other goals, in hopes of putting guardrails on the technology’s possible risks to national security and economic well-being.
CBS News first reported that Trump would be announcing the AI investment.
Trump supporter Elon Musk, worth more than $400 billion, was an early investor in OpenAI but has since challenged its move to for-profit status and has started his own AI company, xAI. Musk is also in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency” created formally on Monday by Trump with the goal of reducing government spending.
Read More: How Elon Musk Became a Kingmaker
Trump previously in January announced a $20 billion investment by DAMAC Properties in the United Arab Emirates to build data centers tied to AI.
—AP reporter Matt O’Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.
Tech Leaders Pledge Up to $500 Billion in AI Investment in U.S.
A New Group Aims to Protect Whistleblowers In the Trump Era
The world needs whistleblowers, perhaps now more than ever. But whistleblowing has never been more dangerous.
Jennifer Gibson has seen this problem develop up close. As a whistleblower lawyer based in the U.K., she has represented concerned insiders in the national security and tech worlds for more than a decade. She’s represented family members of civilians killed by Pentagon drone strikes, and executives from top tech companies who’ve turned against their billionaire bosses.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But for today’s whistleblowers, Gibson says, both the stakes and the risks are higher than ever. President Trump has returned to the White House and wasted no time using the might of the state to retaliate against perceived enemies. This time, Trump boasts the support of many of Silicon Valley’s richest moguls, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have overhauled their social-media platforms to his benefit. Meanwhile, tech companies are racing to build AI “superintelligence,” a technology that could turbocharge surveillance and military capabilities. Politics and technology are converging in an environment ripe for abuses of power.
Gibson is at the forefront of a group of lawyers trying to make it safer for conscientious employees to speak out. She’s the co-founder of Psst, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in September and designed to “collectivize” whistleblowing.
On Monday, to coincide with Trump’s inauguration, Psst launched what it calls the “safe”: a secure, online deposit box where tech or government insiders can share concerns of potential wrongdoing. Users can choose to speak with a pro-bono lawyer immediately, anonymously if they prefer. Or they can ask Psst’s lawyers to do nothing with their information unless another person turns up with similar concerns. If that second party emerges, and both give their consent, Psst is able to match the two together to discuss the issue, and potentially begin a lawsuit.
Read More: The Twitter Whistleblower Needs You To Trust Him.
Gibson says the aim is to overcome the “first mover problem” in whistleblowing: that even if several insiders privately share the same concerns, they may never find out about each other, because nobody wants to risk everything by being the first to speak up. “The chances are, if you’re a tech worker concerned about what the company is doing, others are concerned as well,” Gibson says. “But nobody wants to be first.”
Psst’s model doesn’t negate all the dangers of whistleblowing. Even if multiple insiders share concerns through its “safe,” they still face the prospect of retaliation if they eventually speak out. The safe is end-to-end encrypted, but a lawyer has access to the decryption key; an adversary could sue Psst in an attempt to obtain it. Because it’s browser-based, Psst’s safe is marginally more vulnerable to attack than an app like Signal. And while information stored in the safe is protected by legal privilege, that’s only a protection against entities who respect legal norms. Gibson acknowledges the limitations, but argues the status quo is even riskier. “We need new and creative ways of making it easier and safer for a larger number of people to collectively speak out,” she says. If we continue to rely on the shrinking group of people willing to blow up their careers to disclose wrongdoing, she adds, “we’re going to be in a lot of trouble, because there aren’t going to be enough of them.”
In her previous role at the whistleblower protection group The Signals Network, Gibson worked on providing independent legal and psychosocial support to Daniel Motaung, a Meta whistleblower who first shared his story in TIME. Before turning her focus to the tech industry, Gibson spent 10 years at the U.K.-based human-rights group Reprieve, where her title was “Head of Extrajudicial Killings.” She focused on U.S. military drone strikes in the war on terror, which reports indicate had a higher civilian death rate than Washington publicly admitted. “I spent 10 years watching national security whistleblowers risk everything and suffer significant harm for disclosing information that the American public, and quite frankly the world, had a right to know,” Gibson says. “In my opinion, we as civil society failed to really protect the whistleblowers who came forward. We tried to get accountability for the abuses based on the information they disclosed—and many of them went to jail with very little media attention.”
Gibson also noticed that in cases where whistleblowers came forward as a group, they tended to fare better than when they did so alone. Speaking out against a powerful entity can be profoundly isolating; many of your former colleagues stop talking to you. One of Psst’s first cases is representing a group of former Microsoft employees who disclosed that the tech giant was pitching its AI to oil companies at the same time as it was also touting its ability to decarbonize the economy. “The benefit of that being a group of whistleblowers was the company can’t immediately identify who the information came from, so they can’t go after one individual,” Gibson says. “When you’re with a collective, even if you’re remaining anonymous, there are a handful of people you can reach out to and talk to. You’re in it together.”
Psst’s safe is based on Hushline, a tool designed by the nonprofit Science & Design Inc., as a simpler way for sources to reach out to journalists and lawyers. It’s a one-way conversation system, essentially functioning as a tip-line. Micah Lee, an engineer on Hushline, says that the tool fills a gap in the market for an encrypted yet accessible central clearinghouse for sensitive information. “It still fills an important need for the type of thing that Psst wants to do,” he says. “[But] it’s filling a space that has some security and usability tradeoffs.” For follow-up conversations, users will have to move over to an encrypted messaging app like Signal, which is marginally safer because users don’t have to trust the server that a website is hosted on, nor that your own browser hasn’t been compromised.
Read More: Inside Frances Haugen’s Decision To Take On Facebook.
For now, Psst’s algorithm for detecting matches is fairly simple. Users will be able to select details about their industry, employer, and the subject of their concerns from several drop-down boxes. Then Psst lawyers, operating under legal privilege, check to see if there is a match with others. Gibson expects the system’s capabilities to evolve. She’s sketched out a blueprint for another version that could use closed, secure large language models to perform the matching automatically. In theory, this could allow whistleblowers to share information with the knowledge that it would only ever be read by a human lawyer in the case that a different person had shared similar concerns. “The idea is to remove me from the process so that even I don’t see it unless there’s a match,” Gibson says.
At the same time, technological advancements have made it easier for governments and tech companies to clamp down on whistleblowing by siloing information, installing monitoring software on employees’ phones and computers, and using AI to check for anomalous behaviors. Psst’s success will depend on whether tech and government insiders trust it enough in this environment to begin depositing tips. Even if the system works as intended, whistleblowers will need extraordinary courage to come forward. With tech and government power colliding, and with AI especially getting more and more powerful, the stakes couldn’t be higher. “We need to understand what is happening inside of these frontier AI labs,” Gibson says. “And we need people inside those companies to feel protected if they feel like they need to speak out.”
Tech, Media & Telecom Roundup: Market Talk
Elon Musk Comments on Controversial Clip of Him Giving a Straight-Arm Salute
Elon Musk was visibly bursting with excitement after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. At a celebratory rally on Monday at Capitol One Arena in Washington, he pumped his fist in the air and bellowed a “Yes!” to the raucous crowd. But another gesture soon after has sent observers questioning whether Musk was expressing just joy, or something more insidious.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“I just want to say thank you for making it happen,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and X owner told the audience of Trump supporters. Musk then slapped his chest with his right hand, before flinging it diagonally upwards, palm face down. He turned around to audience members behind the podium, and repeated the gesture. “My heart goes out to you,” the 53-year-old billionaire said, palm back on his chest.
But the quick, salute-like movement drew attention as swiftly as it happened. In live commentary, CNN anchor Erin Burnett pointed the gesture out, and co-anchor Kasie Hunt noted, “It’s not something that you typically see in American political rallies.”
Social media swarmed with confusion—and theories. “WTF?? What did Elon Musk just do??” one X user asked. Streamer and leftist political commentator Hasan Pike posted: “did elon musk just hit the roman salute at his inauguration speech?”
Other users immediately drew comparison to a Nazi salute popularly used by Adolf Hitler. Public broadcaster PBS shared the clip on social media and reported it as “what appeared to be a fascist salute.” Musician and environmental activist Bill Madden posted: “If giving the Nazi ‘Sieg Heil’ salute was an Olympic event like gymnastics, Elon Musk would’ve received a perfect score of 10. Musk even nailed the facial expression. Seriously, Hitler would be jealous.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who self-identified as a “historian of fascism,” posted on Bluesky: “It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.” Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the gesture as a “Roman salute,” and said it will “only cause greater alarm among Jews who have expressed concern with the billionaire’s proximity to Trump’s inner circle while platforming views prominent with [the] far-right.”
Rolling Stone magazine reported that neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists in America and abroad were “abuzz” after the gesture, citing celebratory captions of the clip from far-right figures such as “Incredible things are happening already lmao” and “Ok maybe woke really is dead.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) posted on X that he “never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the Presidential seal. This abhorrent gesture has no place in our society and belongs in the darkest chapters of human history.”
While speaking on stage at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Switzerland, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked by a member of the press about his reaction to Musk’s gesture, to which he responded: “We have freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany, everyone can say what he wants, even if he is a billionaire. What we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions.” (In Germany, performing the Nazi salute is illegal.)
However, some others have come to Musk’s defense.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization whose mission is to combat antisemitism and which describes a “Hitler salute” as one with an “outstretched right arm with the palm down,” posted on X shortly after the incident that the billionaire Trump mega-donor “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and that “all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.”
- Donald Trump’s Disruption Is Back
- Breaking Down All of Trump’s Day 1 Presidential Actions
- Facing 4 More Years of Trump, Democrats Can’t Agree on a Plan
- White House’s Pandemic Office, Busy With Bird Flu, May Shrink Under Trump
- Trump Launches New Immigration Measures, Prompting Abrupt Shift in U.S. Border Policy
Eyal Yakoby, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who campaigned against antisemitism on college campuses, called it “a stupid hand gesture” in a post on X, adding: “Anyone trying to portray him as a Nazi is intentionally misleading the public.”
Aaron Astor, a history professor at Maryville College in Tennessee, posted: “This is a socially awkward autistic man’s wave to the crowd where he says ‘my heart goes out to you.’” (Musk has previously disclosed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, also known as autism spectrum disorder.) Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon offered a similar explanation, adding: “We don’t need to invent outrage.”
Musk has previously been criticized for allowing pro-Nazi accounts to flourish on his platform and for posting right-wing memes and seemingly supporting antisemitic conspiracy theories, which led to an exodus of advertisers from X in 2023, and for recently supporting Germany’s far-right populist AfD party, whose leaders have made “antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic” statements, according to the ADL.
The debate over Musk’s latest move has added fuel to other ongoing feuds, too.
Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) targeted the ADL, which has been accused by the left of turning a blind eye toward Trump and his allies, in a post on X, saying: “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.”
Staunch Trump supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), meanwhile, threatened PBS by saying she would call it to testify before the oversight subcommittee she chairs that is set to work with the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk oversees. “I look forward to PBS @NewsHour coming before my committee and explaining why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds,” Greene posted.
Musk did not directly address the controversy Monday night, though he replied to a number of posts on X about it—thanking the ADL, mocking Ocasio-Cortez, and agreeing with a post that said: “Can we please retire the calling people a Nazi thing? It didn’t work during the election, it’s not working now, it’s tired, boring, and old material, you’ve burned out its effect, people don’t feel shocked by it anymore, the wolf has been cried too many times.”
Musk also reposted a video clip of his rally remarks that included the moment he made the questionable gesture, commenting: “The future is so exciting!!”
—Ayesha Javed/Davos contributed reporting.
- Tech – TIME
- Bitcoin Surges Ahead of Trump’s Inauguration in Anticipation of Crypto-Friendly Policies
Bitcoin Surges Ahead of Trump’s Inauguration in Anticipation of Crypto-Friendly Policies
WASHINGTON — The price of bitcoin surged to over $109,000 early Monday, just hours ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, as a pumped up cryptocurrency industry bets he’ll take action soon after returning to the White House.
Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that bitcoin “seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies with a convert’s zeal. He’s launched a new cryptocurrency venture and vowed on the campaign trail to take steps early in his presidency to make the U.S. into the “crypto capital” of the world.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]His promises include creating a U.S. crypto stockpile, enacting industry-friendly regulation and even appointing a crypto “czar” for his administration.
“You’re going to be very happy with me,” Trump told crypto-enthusiasts at a bitcoin conference last summer.
Read More: What Trump’s Win Means for Crypto
Bitcoin is the world’s most popular cryptocurrency and was created in 2009 as a kind of electronic cash uncontrolled by banks or governments. It and newer forms of cryptocurrencies have moved from the financial fringes to the mainstream in wild fits and starts.
The highly volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, as well as their use by criminals, scammers and rogue nations, has attracted plenty of critics, who say the digital currencies have limited utility and often are just Ponzi schemes.
But crypto has so far defied naysayers and survived multiple prolonged price drops in its short lifespan. Wealthy players in the crypto industry, which felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, spent heavily to help Trump win last November’s election. Bitcoin has surged in price since Trump’s victory, topping $100,000 for the first time last month before briefly sliding down to about $90,000. On Friday, it rose about 5%. It jumped more than $9,000 early Monday, according to CoinDesk.
Two years ago, bitcoin was trading at about $20,000.
Trump’s picks for key cabinet and regulatory positions are stocked with crypto supporters, including his choice to lead the Treasury and Commerce departments and the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Read More: Why CEOs Are Cheering Donald Trump’s Pick for Treasury Secretary
Key industry players held a first ever “Crypto Ball” on Friday to celebrate the first “crypto president.” The event was sold out, with tickets costing several thousand dollars.
Here’s a look at some detailed action Trump might take in the early days of his administration:
Crypto council
As a candidate Trump promised that he would create a special advisory council to provide guidance on creating “clear” and “straightforward” regulations on crypto within the first 100 days of his presidency.
Details about the council and its membership are still unclear, but after winning November’s election, Trump named tech executive and venture capitalist David Sacks to be the administration’s crypto “czar.” Trump also announced in late December that former North Carolina congressional candidate Bo Hines will be the executive director of the “Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.”
At last year’s bitcoin conference, Trump told crypto supporters that new regulations “will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.” Trump’s pick to lead the SEC, Paul Atkins, has been a strong advocate for cryptocurrencies.
Read More: How the Crypto World Learned to Love Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025
Crypto investors and companies chafed as what they said was a hostile Biden administration that went overboard in unfair enforcement actions and accounting policies that have stifled innovation in the industry—particularly at the hands of outgoing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“As far as general expectations from the Trump Administration, I think one of the best things to bet on is a tone change at the SEC,” said Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of the advocacy group Coin Center.
Gensler, who is set to leave as Trump takes office, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that he’s proud of his office’s actions to police the crypto industry, which he said is “rife with bad actors.”
Strategic bitcoin reserve
Trump also promised that as president he’ll ensure the U.S. government stockpiles bitcoin, much like it already does with gold. At the bitcoin conference earlier this summer, Trump said the U.S. government would keep, rather than auction off, the billions of dollars in bitcoin it has seized through law enforcement actions.
Crypto advocates have posted a draft executive order online that would establish a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” as a “permanent national asset” to be administered by the Treasury Department through its Exchange Stabilization Fund. The draft order calls for the Treasury Department to eventually hold at least $21 billion in bitcoin.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming has proposed legislation mandating the U.S. government stockpile bitcoin, which advocates said would help diversify government holdings and hedge against financial risks. Critics say bitcoin’s volatility make it a poor choice as a reserve asset.
Creating such a stockpile would also be a “giant step in the direction of bitcoin becoming normalized, becoming legitimatized in the eyes of people who don’t yet see it as legitimate,” said Zack Shapiro, an attorney who is head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
Ross Ulbricht
At the bitcoin conference earlier this year, Trump received loud cheers when he reiterated a promise to commute the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of the drug-selling website Silk Road that used crypto for payments.
Ulbricht’s case has energized some crypto advocates and Libertarian activists, who believe government investigators overreached in building their case against Silk Road.
China’s Vice President Meets With Elon Musk and J.D. Vance Ahead of Trump Inauguration
BEIJING — China’s vice president held meetings with the U.S. vice president-elect and U.S. business leaders, including Elon Musk, in Washington on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, as the two major powers tackle ongoing tensions over trade and technology.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Han Zheng, who serves as an envoy for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the inauguration, “discussed a range of topics including fentanyl, balancing trade and regional stability” with J.D. Vance, according to the Trump transition team.
Read More: How Asia Is Bracing for Trump’s Second Term
Han stressed the “extensive common interests and enormous space of cooperation” the United States and China share in economic and trade relations despite “some disagreements and frictions,” according to a readout of his meeting with Vance issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs and other measures against China in his second term, while also hinting and ways in which the two rival powers could cooperate on issues such as regional conflicts and curbing the export of substances used in the production of fentanyl.
In an unorthodox move, Trump last month invited Xi to his inauguration. No head of state has previously made an official visit to the U.S. for the inauguration, according to State Department historical records.
Read More: Here’s Who’s Attending Trump’s Inauguration, From Foreign Leaders to Big Tech Executives
While Xi will not personally attend the event, he and Trump held a phone call on Friday during which they discussed trade, fentanyl and TikTok. The Chinese social media app restored service to users in the U.S. on Sunday, just hours after it went dark in response to a federal ban, which Trump said he would pause by executive order on Monday.
Han also met with Musk and other top U.S. business executives, including representatives of the U.S.-China Business Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The Chinese vice president reiterated promises for an improved business environment for foreign firms in China and expressed hopes that U.S. companies will continue expanding investment in the country.
Musk, whose company Tesla operates a factory in Shanghai, posted on his platform X after the meeting that he has long opposed the TikTok ban “because it goes against freedom of speech.”
“That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced,” he wrote. “Something needs to change.”
X is banned in China alongside other major U.S. social media and news apps and websites, including YouTube, Google, Facebook and many major U.S. media.
- Tech – TIME
- How TikTok’s Most Followed U.S. Influencers Reacted to the App Going Dark: ‘I Feel Cut Off From the World’
How TikTok’s Most Followed U.S. Influencers Reacted to the App Going Dark: ‘I Feel Cut Off From the World’
When TikTok influencers in the United States opened their apps on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 18, many expected to have their last few hours of scrolling or posting. Instead, they were met with the following message: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]What followed was hours of uncertainty and discomfort for many high-profile TikTok users, as they sought to find alternative avenues to connect with their fanbases.
On Sunday afternoon, TikTok announced that it would begin restoring service to U.S. users that already have the app downloaded. The social media platform went on to thank President-elect Trump, who had spoken out on Truth Social hours before, stating that he planned to issue an executive order to save the app upon his return to the White House on Monday.
After the app went dark on Saturday night, TikTok’s biggest U.S. influencers reacted with a mixture of disappointment and resigned humor as they embarked on their first day without the platform. Some influencers rebounded by using other social media options, primarily Instagram.
TikTok star Charli D’Amelio, whose online fame has landed her a role on Broadway’s & Juliet, posted on Instagram reels on Saturday night: “Hey reels, how we doing? We’re here,” she said in the short upload. She later returned to Instagram to post a video of “the first TikTok dance she ever learned.”
Although D’Amelio’s Instagram audience is more than substantial—she currently has 42.8 million followers—her following on TikTok is staggeringly higher, as she boasts 156.8 million followers on the app.
Read More: Here’s What Happened When India Banned TikTok in 2020
Like D’Amelio, other top influencers used alternative social media platforms to post notes of gratitude to their followers and share nostalgic look-backs at their years on TikTok. Jojo Siwa, of Dance Moms and Dancing with the Stars fame, was among many influencers that reacted by posting old videos of themselves. Siwa, who has over 45 million TikTok followers, took to Instagram—where she has 11 million followers—to post a compilation of popular TikTok videos of herself, her caption reading: “Making this made me pretty emotional. Thank you for all the memories made.”
Spencer X—a musician and beatboxer who rose to fame on TikTok and eventually racked up almost 55 million followers on the app—also relocated to Instagram during the ban.
“TikTok forever changed my life. This is so crazy to see…” he wrote on his Instagram story to his 958k Instagram followers. “You’ll forever be in our hearts. Thank you for everything.”
YouTuber Larri Merrit, known professionally as “Larray,” posted videos on his Instagram story of him and fellow internet personality-turned-celebrity Quenlin Blackwell crying after TikTok stopped working for them. Larray, who has 27.5 million TikTok followers and around 6.5 million followers on Instagram, wrote that he hopes his followers will “continue to uplift and celebrate [their] favorite creators as they navigate this new chapter,” urging them to follow creators on other platforms.
Meanwhile, Alix Earle— a TikTok and media personality known for her vlog-style content—posted a video of herself teary-eyed and emotional on TikTok before the app went dark on Saturday night.
“I feel like I’m going through heartbreak,” she wrote for a caption displayed across the video. “This platform is more than an app or a job to me. I have so many memories on here. I have posted every day for the past 6 years of my life. I’ve shared my friends, family, relationships, personal struggles, secrets.”
“I cried myself to sleep last night,” she added.
Other influencers complained they felt “disconnected” and “cut off” from their communities when unable to access the app.
Internet personality James Charles, who got his start as a makeup aficionado on YouTube but now has over 40 million followers on TikTok posted to Instagram when his TikTok stopped working, complaining that it was “dystopian.”
“I don’t know what to do… I’ve already opened and closed the app probably six times already just to keep getting the same stupid warning message,” Charles told his 20 million Instagram followers. “I feel disconnected. I feel cut off from the world and my community…Now I’m rooting for Trump? Ew.”
TikTok went dark after the Supreme Court unanimously decided on Friday that the app’s potential risk to U.S. national security warranted a ban in the United States, outweighing anger from citizens over freedom of speech concerns and its popularity in the country.
Trump, set to be sworn in on Monday, January 20, posted on his Truth Social account on Sunday that he was “asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark.”
“I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security,” he wrote. “The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
TikTok Restores U.S. Service Despite Legal Ban, Citing ‘Trump’s Efforts’
TikTok restored service to users in the United States on Sunday just hours after the popular video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban, which President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office.
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the ban takes full effect. He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of U.S. TikTok users awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But by Sunday afternoon, a message greeted those who signed on thanking them—and the president-elect—for their support.
“As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” the message read.
TikTok said it shut down the platform late Saturday because of a federal law that required parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operation by Sunday. Google and Apple also removed TikTok from their digital stores. The law, which passed with wide bipartisan support in April, allows for steep fines.
While the company that runs TikTok in the U.S. said on X that the steps Trump outlined Sunday provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties,” the TikTok app remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores.
“It was a brilliant marketing stunt for both TikTok and incoming president Donald Trump,” Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with market research firm Emarketer, said. “By abruptly shutting off service, TikTok proved how unpopular the ban was among its users.”
Why was TikTok banned? What can Trump do about it?
The law that took effect Sunday required ByteDance to cut ties with the platform’s U.S. operations due to national security concerns. However, the statute authorized the sitting president to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale was underway.
Although investors made some offers, ByteDance has said it would not sell. Trump said his order would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how Trump’s promised action would fare from a legal standpoint since the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban on Friday and the statute came into force the day before Trump’s return to the White House. Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin and the bill’s author, said on Fox News Sunday that “there is no extension” for TikTok.
“Let me tell you, as the person who wrote the bill, the extension was within the 270-day window, which closed at 12:01 a.m. this morning,” he said, adding that only if the president certifies there are “legally binding documents” showing a divestiture is on the way would there be an extension.
“I think Trump can at least make an argument that the language is meant to cover any president,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said.
Some lawmakers who voted for the sale-or-ban law, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, remain in favor of it. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas warned companies Sunday not to provide TikTok with technical support.
“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law,” Cotton wrote on X. “Think about it.”
Constitutional and business law attorney Kirk McGill said he thinks Trump lacks the legal authority to suspend the ban but it’s unlikely the question would reach a court in the time it might take TikTok to find a buyer.
It’s also unlikely that Apple or Google will face legal consequences if they move forward with Trump’s demands, given that his administration would have to initiate any prosecutions, McGill said.
“In the next week or two, before the courts have the chance to do anything, this is certainly going to be a political fight, not a legal one,” McGill said.
TikTok shuts off—but only temporarily?
The on-and-off availability of TikTok came after the Supreme Court ruled that the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about limiting speech by the app or its millions of U.S. users.
When TikTok users in the U.S. tried to watch or post videos on the platform as of Saturday night, they saw a pop-up message under the headline, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” the message said. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The app was removed late Saturday from prominent app stores and remained so as of Sunday afternoon. Apple told customers it also took down other apps developed by ByteDance. They included Lemon8, which some influencers had promoted as a TikTok alternative, the popular video editing app CapCut and photo editor Hypic.
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said.
Google declined to comment. Apple did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the day’s developments.
Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to take down its platform, only for app stores to remove it. Current users expected to continue to have access to videos until a lack of updates caused the app to stop working.
After TikTok was back online Sunday, content creator Tiffany Watson, 20, said she was “pretty hopeful” it would stay up. At the same time, Watson said her dedication “solely” to the platform declined during the months the threat of a ban loomed.
“Overall, I hope that creators will succeed and find community in spite of the unpredictability of TikTok,” she said.
Will the ban’s timing help TikTok?
Trump’s plan to spare TikTok on his first day in office reflected the ban’s coincidental timing and the unusual mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform that first gained popularity with often silly videos featuring dances and music clips.
During his first presidential term, Trump in 2020 issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance and the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat, moves that courts subsequently blocked.
Trump has since credited TikTok with helping him win support from young voters in last year’s presidential election. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location.
Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told CBS News on Sunday that the president-elect discussed TikTok during a weekend call with Chinese President Xi Jinping “and they agreed to work together on this.”
The Biden administration has also stressed in recent days that it did not intend to implement or enforce the ban before Trump takes office on Monday.
Who are possible buyers of TikTok?
ByteDance has publicly insisted it would not sell TikTok, and no likely buyer has emerged.
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to purchase the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok user’s videos based on their interests.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long warned that the algorithm is vulnerable to manipulation by China. To date, the U.S. has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok providing user data to Chinese authorities or tinkering with the algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
Another unknown is whether Trump will remain a TikTok fan.
“He’s flip-flopped on his stance toward TikTok before, and there’s no guarantee he won’t do so again,” EMarketer’s Enberg said.
—Kanis Leung in Hong Kong and Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta, Nadia Lathan in Austin, Texas, and Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed to this story.
Trump Says He Will ‘Most Likely’ Give TikTok a 90-Day Extension to Avoid U.S. Ban
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he “most likely” would give TikTok 90 more days to work out a deal that would allow the popular video-sharing platform to avoid a U.S. ban.
Trump said in an NBC News interview that he had not decided what to do but was considering granting TikTok a reprieve after he is sworn into office on Monday. A law that prohibits mobile app stores and internet hosting services from distributing TikTok to U.S. users takes effect on Sunday.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Under the law passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last year, TikTok’s China-based parent company had nine months to sell the platform’s U.S. operation to an approved buyer. The law allows the sitting president to grant an extension if a sale is in progress.
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate,” Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in a phone interview. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation.
“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he said.
Both White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made clear Friday that the Biden administration would leave the law’s implementation to Trump given that his inauguration falls the day after the ban takes effect.
In a statement later Friday, TikTok asked for “a definitive statement” saying the Biden administration would not enforce the law or try to fine app store operators like Apple and Google and other U.S. companies if they don’t stop making TikTok available Sunday.
Without those assurances, TikTok said it “will be forced to go dark.” But the company did not provide details, including whether it would voluntarily shut down its U.S. platform at midnight or suspend its operations after losing access to service providers it relies on.
The White House on Saturday called TikTok’s statement “a stunt.”
“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” Jean-Pierre said. “We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Neither Apple, Google or Oracle, which hosts TikTok’s data on its servers, have responded to questions about what they plan to do on Sunday.
Here’s What Happened When India Banned TikTok in 2020
When Congress passed a bill in April 2024 ordering ByteDance to either sell TikTok or face a ban, many speculated that ByteDance would opt to sell, because the American market was too valuable to relinquish freely. But TikTok actually faced an even bigger exodus of users in 2020, when India banned the app.
At the time, India was TikTok’s biggest foreign market outside of China, with 200 million users. (For comparison, the U.S. currently has over 170 million TikTok users.) Following military clashes along the disputed border between India and China, the Indian government banned TikTok along with over 50 other Chinese apps, citing national security concerns.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Despite the ban, TikTok did just fine in expanding around the world, while national and international tech companies rushed to fill the Indian void, in the process transforming their global approaches to social media. At the same time, digital rights activists tell TIME that the Indian government used the ban as precedent to crack down upon other digital platforms they deemed to be a threat. The way that users, tech giants, the government, and TikTok all adapted to the ban offer clues about what could unfold in the U.S. in the coming months.
Post-ban opportunity
Indian users flocked to TikTok as early as 2017. Video was already a dominant format in the country, buoyed by massive 4G and 5G infrastructure projects that allowed people with smartphones in remote villages to stream content. TikTok took that ecosystem even farther, allowing India’s millions of regional dialect speakers to share content and create digital communities. (At the same time, caste-based hate speech grew rapidly on the platform.)
“A lot of the people in the rural part of the country were okay with just being themselves, and creating a 15-second clip of some song they liked,” says Murli Kanne, an entrepreneur based in Hyderabad, India, who was working in influencer marketing at the time. “People started getting followers really easily. Hindi was mostly the language used in the viral TikToks, but a lot of regional content popped up as well.”
When the Indian government banned TikTok in June 2020, some influencers striving for global fame started using VPNs to post on TikTok. But for the millions and millions of smaller-scale users, local companies rushed to meet their demand, including MX TakaTak, Chingari, and Moj—which was launched in July 2020 by the Indian social media powerhouse ShareChat, registered over one million downloads within a week. In November 2020, at least 13 of the top 100 social apps in the Google Play Store in India were TikTok clones, with most of them newly launched, Rest of World reported. Many of these apps offered money to influencers to post on their platforms. The Indian government encouraged these efforts by issuing an Innovation Challenge to build local versions of banned apps.
Read More: Will You Still Be Able to Use TikTok If It’s Banned? Here’s What You Need to Know
Big Tech takes over
But as these local apps fought for market share, they were about to fall behind much larger and more-resourced American competitors. “A few of these apps were not up to the mark when we compare tech,” Kanne says. “I don’t think they had a chance with the giants against them.”
YouTube was already a hugely popular platform in India. Within months of the TikTok ban, its parent company Alphabet launched a beta version of YouTube Shorts in the country. And because audiences were already on the platform, many Indian content creators found instant success with Shorts. Comedy creator Dushyant Kukreja found that his Shorts received similar levels of views as his TikTok videos, and he soon grew his YouTube following from 40,000 to over 6 million. Creator Manjusha Martin, who had built a TikTok audience of over 770,000, created a web series on Shorts, surpassing 2 million followers on that platform.
Buoyed by this success, YouTube soon expanded Shorts to dozens more countries. By the summer of 2022, they reported 1.5 billion viewers every month, rivaling TikTok’s viewership.
Instagram, not to be outdone, pushed out its Reels feature in August 2020, and made India the first country to have a version of the app with Reels in a separate tab. Indians tuned into watch music and cricket, with over 1 million reels created related to the 2022 ICC T20 World Cup. In 2022, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Reels made up more than 20% of the time people spent on Instagram, making it the company’s “fastest-growing content format by far.”
Ultimately, most of the Indian-based TikTok alternatives folded, and Indian audiences and creators got used to Shorts and Reels. The scrappy and broadly rural culture of TikTok in India winnowed down into a more top-down influencer culture on those two platforms. India is now the biggest market for both YouTube (almost 500 million monthly users) and Instagram (362 million).
Global competition and privacy concerns
Although the Indian userbase was a significant loss for TikTok, the company simply expanded across the world. Research shows that TikTok’s userbase essentially doubled between 2020 and 2024. And the U.S. wasn’t even the main driver of this uptick: Indonesia has the most TikTok users in the world. (Brazil, Mexico, and Vietnam also have sizable audiences.) TikTok’s current dominance across continents, and its proven ability to rebound from previous massive bans, mean that ByteDance is likely in no hurry to sell the app. Rather, it will likely simply continue its expansion abroad, and hope that America’s political situation changes.
Meta and YouTube, meanwhile, have a huge opportunity to grow, just like they did in India in 2020. And this time, they have a huge headstart, because Reels and Shorts are already a key part of American social media.
However, many Americans have expressed the desire for new platforms—as evidenced by the flood of TikTokers to the Chinese app Red Note over the past week. “Unless you pay Meta to promote your posts, they’re not really going to show it to people,” Christina Shuler, a South Carolina-based entrepreneur who recently signed up for Red Note, tells TIME. “And Facebook is just a bunch of angry people on there. So it was refreshing to get on Red Note and know that my content was appreciated.”
As users search for a new landing spot, digital rights activists view these TikTok bans from a more ominous perspective. Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia-Pacific policy director at Access Now, says that India’s TikTok ban led to an increase in the government censorship of digital content. Over the last couple months, VPN apps have been disappearing from the country’s app stores, seemingly for not complying with local rules. “The ban has built a precedent that has allowed the Indian government to continue blocking access to more web and social media content, including very often content posted by journalists or critics of the Administration,” Chima claims.
U.S.-based activists worry that the same thing could happen following the U.S. ban, especially given that the Supreme Court upheld it, giving the green light for Congress to put pressure on other social media apps they deem dangerous going forward. Other countries may follow suit and issue their own bans, as well. “
We are disappointed to see the Court sweep past the undisputed content-based justification for the law—to control what speech Americans see and share with each other—and rule only based on the shaky data privacy concerns,” David Greene, the civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a statement emailed to TIME.
Everything Trump Has Said About the TikTok Ban
The fate of Tiktok is now in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump after the Supreme Court upheld the ban on the viral video app Friday. The Biden Administration announced it would not enforce the ban, which was set to go into effect on Sunday, Jan. 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.”
Trump previously asked the Supreme Court to pause the ban from going into effect so his Administration could look for a “political resolution.” But the President-elect’s current position on TikTok is a reverse from his 2020 stance, when Trump sought to ban TikTok. A federal judge blocked the act in December 2020. “You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said in a post-election news conference in December.
The U.S. first began investigating TikTok in 2019, two years after the Chinese company ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, which was then merged into TikTok.
The ban comes after President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan law last April forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or be banned in the U.S. citing national security concerns given the app’s connections to China. During Supreme Court arguments, Department of Justice Solicitor General Elizaveth Prelogar claimed China could harvest the data of U.S. users which could then be used to harass, rescruit, and spy on the United States. ByteDance has said that it will not sell TikTok and claimed that the law infringes on the First Amendment rights of the company and the 170 million American users.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court said in its decision. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
In a statement Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that given the timing of the ban, “actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday.”
Earlier on Friday, Trump announced that he had spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the two talked about TikTok, along with other topics. “President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe,” he said.
Negotiations regarding the future of the social media platform appear to be in motion. In December, Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew. While the Supreme Court result did not fall in favor with the desires of TikTok executives, Chew still thanked Trump for his “commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” in a video posted after the Supreme Court decision Friday, in which he shared that there had been more than 60 billion views of Trump’s content on the app. Chew also shared that the company was still working hard to ensure the app would still be available to its users in the U.S.
“TikTok itself is a fantastic platform,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for a national security adviser, told Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier on Wednesday. “We’re going to find a way to preserve it but protect people’s data.”
Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning TikTok
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users’ phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
The decision came against the backdrop of unusual political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed that he could negotiate a solution and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has signaled it won’t enforce the law beginning Sunday, his final full day in office.
Trump, mindful of TikTok’s popularity, and his own 14.7 million followers on the app, finds himself on the opposite side of the argument from prominent Senate Republicans who fault TikTok’s Chinese owner for not finding a buyer before now. Trump said in a Truth Social post shortly before the decision was issued that TikTok was among the topics in his conversation Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
It’s unclear what options are open to Trump once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed for a 90-day pause in the restrictions on the app if there had been progress toward a sale before it took effect. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it’s uncertain whether the prospect of a sale once the law is in effect could trigger a 90-day respite for TikTok.
“Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, adding that the law “does not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch filed short separate opinions noting some reservations about the court’s decision but going along with the outcome.
“Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was persuaded by the argument that China could get access to “vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”
Some digital rights groups slammed the court’s ruling shortly after it was released.
“Today’s unprecedented decision upholding the TikTok ban harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world,” said Kate Ruane, a director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which has supported TikTok’s challenge to the federal law.
Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the effect on their business if TikTok shuts down. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner mechanic shop in Conyers, Georgia. “And very scared about the decrease that I’m going to have in reaching customers and worried I’m going to potentially lose my business in the next six months.”
At arguments, the justices were told by a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese technology company that is its parent, how difficult it would be to consummate a deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that has made the social media platform wildly successful.
The app allows users to watch hundreds of videos in about half an hour because some are only a few seconds long, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky complaining that TikTok is designed to be addictive and harms kids’ mental health. Similar suits were filed by more than a dozen states. TikTok has called the claims inaccurate.
The dispute over TikTok’s ties to China has come to embody the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.
“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments.”
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
TikTok points out the U.S. has not presented evidence that China has attempted to manipulate content on its U.S. platform or gather American user data through TikTok.
Bipartisan majorities in Congress passed legislation and Biden signed it into law in April. The law was the culmination of a yearslong saga in Washington over TikTok, which the government sees as a national security threat.
TikTok, which sued the government last year over the law, has long denied it could be used as a tool of Beijing. A three-judge panel made up of two Republican appointees and a Democratic appointee unanimously upheld the law in December, prompting TikTok’s quick appeal to the Supreme Court.
Without a sale to an approved buyer, the law bars app stores operated by Apple, Google and others from offering TikTok beginning on Sunday. Internet hosting services also will be prohibited from hosting TikTok.
ByteDance has said it won’t sell. But some investors have been eyeing it, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt. McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative has said it and its unnamed partners have presented a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s U.S. assets. The consortium, which includes “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, did not disclose the financial terms of the offer.
McCourt, in a statement following the ruling, said his group was “ready to work with the company and President Trump to complete a deal.”
Prelogar told the justices last week that having the law take effect “might be just the jolt” ByteDance needs to reconsider its position.
___
Associated Press writers Haleluya Hadero, Mae Anderson and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Hadero reported from South Bend, Indiana, and Anderson from New York.
The Biggest Moments from the 2025 TIME100 Dinner in Davos
Leaders from across the world of business, technology, policy, and entertainment gathered at the TIME100 Davos Dinner as the World Economic Forum’s 55th annual meeting kicked off on Jan. 20. In keeping with this year’s annual meeting theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of AI company Anthropic, joined TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs on stage to talk about the future of AI.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Discussing what Amodei calls powerful AI, which he prefers over Artificial General Intelligence because of the latter’s connotations with science fiction, the CEO emphasized the importance of understanding the reality of the technology’s potential. “We have to be very serious about when this actually happens, what is possible and what exists. What are the bounds that are provided by physics, by the limits in human institutions, what’s left after we consider those,” he said. “Those barriers really will be truly radical, but it will have limits, and it’s high time that we start thinking about that. Almost none of that is in the public conversation.”
The event was held just after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term in the White House in Washington, D.C.. His inauguration was attended by billionaire Elon Musk, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple boss Tim Cook, and Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai.
Elaborating on his previous comments about the influence of industrialists on government, Amodei said, “We’re probably hitting similar levels of wealth concentration as we had in the mid-to-late 19th century. I think John Rockefeller, his wealth was equivalent to something like 1.5% of the U.S. GDP in the late 19th century. We’re now reaching that rate with Elon Musk as well. And I do have a concern that, without intervention, AI will make that even more extreme, make it five or 10 times more extreme, and I think that is undesirable.”
Looking forward to AI developments he expects in the year ahead, Amodei predicted the rise of “virtual collaborators” that operate “a lot like a co-worker.”
Read More: How the Rise of New Digital Workers Will Lead to an Unlimited Age
“There’s going to be a lot of debate about how to use them, the economic value that they create. But also, are they safe? Are they wreaking havoc? And perhaps most important of all, what about the human economy? What about job displacement?” he said.
While Amodei was the keynote speaker at the TIME 100 Davos dinner, other leaders gave toasts about how they think new technology can help the world. Obiageli Ezekwesili, president of Human Capital Africa and former vice president at the World Bank for the Africa region, shared her hopes for the potential of technology in the continent. “Whereas Africa missed out on the agrarian revolution, missed out on the industrial revolution, which remarkably transformed our societies in the world, Africa is on board the train for information and communication technology,” she said, “and with even brighter hopes through artificial intelligence.
She said that in Africa, “Technology is leveling a playing field, ensuring that talent and determination, not privilege, is basically driving success.” She also spoke about how technology is unleashing the talents of women and young people in Africa, “amplifying their points, scaling their ideas and connecting their efforts to economic opportunities beyond their others.”
Read More: 5 Predictions for AI in 2025
Speaking about what gives her hope, Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said, “I’m increasingly optimistic, even though it’s not an unmitigated blessing, that technology can help” with the three challenges of weak economic growth around the world, climate change, and aging demographics.
Yulia Svyrydenko, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine, made a call to be “brave enough to take action to stop aggression” during her toast. “In the Ukrainian language, the word ‘freedom’ has one more meaning: it’s ‘will,’” she said. “So if we want true freedom, we must have will for peace, will for security guarantee, will for sanction policy, will for mutual support, will to invest in Ukraine and strengthen our economy, and will to make the right choice for the future of our country.”
The TIME100 Davos Dinner was presented by SOMPO, Diriyah Company, Technology Innovation Institute, Brandi, and Fortescue.
China Signals It Is Open to a Deal Keeping TikTok in U.S.
- Tech – TIME
- Bitcoin Surges Ahead of Trump’s Inauguration in Anticipation of Crypto-Friendly Policies
Bitcoin Surges Ahead of Trump’s Inauguration in Anticipation of Crypto-Friendly Policies
WASHINGTON — The price of bitcoin surged to over $109,000 early Monday, just hours ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, as a pumped up cryptocurrency industry bets he’ll take action soon after returning to the White House.
Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that bitcoin “seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies with a convert’s zeal. He’s launched a new cryptocurrency venture and vowed on the campaign trail to take steps early in his presidency to make the U.S. into the “crypto capital” of the world.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]His promises include creating a U.S. crypto stockpile, enacting industry-friendly regulation and even appointing a crypto “czar” for his administration.
“You’re going to be very happy with me,” Trump told crypto-enthusiasts at a bitcoin conference last summer.
Read More: What Trump’s Win Means for Crypto
Bitcoin is the world’s most popular cryptocurrency and was created in 2009 as a kind of electronic cash uncontrolled by banks or governments. It and newer forms of cryptocurrencies have moved from the financial fringes to the mainstream in wild fits and starts.
The highly volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, as well as their use by criminals, scammers and rogue nations, has attracted plenty of critics, who say the digital currencies have limited utility and often are just Ponzi schemes.
But crypto has so far defied naysayers and survived multiple prolonged price drops in its short lifespan. Wealthy players in the crypto industry, which felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, spent heavily to help Trump win last November’s election. Bitcoin has surged in price since Trump’s victory, topping $100,000 for the first time last month before briefly sliding down to about $90,000. On Friday, it rose about 5%. It jumped more than $9,000 early Monday, according to CoinDesk.
Two years ago, bitcoin was trading at about $20,000.
Trump’s picks for key cabinet and regulatory positions are stocked with crypto supporters, including his choice to lead the Treasury and Commerce departments and the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Read More: Why CEOs Are Cheering Donald Trump’s Pick for Treasury Secretary
Key industry players held a first ever “Crypto Ball” on Friday to celebrate the first “crypto president.” The event was sold out, with tickets costing several thousand dollars.
Here’s a look at some detailed action Trump might take in the early days of his administration:
Crypto council
As a candidate Trump promised that he would create a special advisory council to provide guidance on creating “clear” and “straightforward” regulations on crypto within the first 100 days of his presidency.
Details about the council and its membership are still unclear, but after winning November’s election, Trump named tech executive and venture capitalist David Sacks to be the administration’s crypto “czar.” Trump also announced in late December that former North Carolina congressional candidate Bo Hines will be the executive director of the “Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.”
At last year’s bitcoin conference, Trump told crypto supporters that new regulations “will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.” Trump’s pick to lead the SEC, Paul Atkins, has been a strong advocate for cryptocurrencies.
Read More: How the Crypto World Learned to Love Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025
Crypto investors and companies chafed as what they said was a hostile Biden administration that went overboard in unfair enforcement actions and accounting policies that have stifled innovation in the industry—particularly at the hands of outgoing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“As far as general expectations from the Trump Administration, I think one of the best things to bet on is a tone change at the SEC,” said Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of the advocacy group Coin Center.
Gensler, who is set to leave as Trump takes office, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that he’s proud of his office’s actions to police the crypto industry, which he said is “rife with bad actors.”
Strategic bitcoin reserve
Trump also promised that as president he’ll ensure the U.S. government stockpiles bitcoin, much like it already does with gold. At the bitcoin conference earlier this summer, Trump said the U.S. government would keep, rather than auction off, the billions of dollars in bitcoin it has seized through law enforcement actions.
Crypto advocates have posted a draft executive order online that would establish a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” as a “permanent national asset” to be administered by the Treasury Department through its Exchange Stabilization Fund. The draft order calls for the Treasury Department to eventually hold at least $21 billion in bitcoin.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming has proposed legislation mandating the U.S. government stockpile bitcoin, which advocates said would help diversify government holdings and hedge against financial risks. Critics say bitcoin’s volatility make it a poor choice as a reserve asset.
Creating such a stockpile would also be a “giant step in the direction of bitcoin becoming normalized, becoming legitimatized in the eyes of people who don’t yet see it as legitimate,” said Zack Shapiro, an attorney who is head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
Ross Ulbricht
At the bitcoin conference earlier this year, Trump received loud cheers when he reiterated a promise to commute the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of the drug-selling website Silk Road that used crypto for payments.
Ulbricht’s case has energized some crypto advocates and Libertarian activists, who believe government investigators overreached in building their case against Silk Road.
Tech, Media & Telecom Roundup: Market Talk
China’s Vice President Meets With Elon Musk and J.D. Vance Ahead of Trump Inauguration
BEIJING — China’s vice president held meetings with the U.S. vice president-elect and U.S. business leaders, including Elon Musk, in Washington on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, as the two major powers tackle ongoing tensions over trade and technology.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Han Zheng, who serves as an envoy for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the inauguration, “discussed a range of topics including fentanyl, balancing trade and regional stability” with J.D. Vance, according to the Trump transition team.
Read More: How Asia Is Bracing for Trump’s Second Term
Han stressed the “extensive common interests and enormous space of cooperation” the United States and China share in economic and trade relations despite “some disagreements and frictions,” according to a readout of his meeting with Vance issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs and other measures against China in his second term, while also hinting and ways in which the two rival powers could cooperate on issues such as regional conflicts and curbing the export of substances used in the production of fentanyl.
In an unorthodox move, Trump last month invited Xi to his inauguration. No head of state has previously made an official visit to the U.S. for the inauguration, according to State Department historical records.
Read More: Here’s Who’s Attending Trump’s Inauguration, From Foreign Leaders to Big Tech Executives
While Xi will not personally attend the event, he and Trump held a phone call on Friday during which they discussed trade, fentanyl and TikTok. The Chinese social media app restored service to users in the U.S. on Sunday, just hours after it went dark in response to a federal ban, which Trump said he would pause by executive order on Monday.
Han also met with Musk and other top U.S. business executives, including representatives of the U.S.-China Business Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The Chinese vice president reiterated promises for an improved business environment for foreign firms in China and expressed hopes that U.S. companies will continue expanding investment in the country.
Musk, whose company Tesla operates a factory in Shanghai, posted on his platform X after the meeting that he has long opposed the TikTok ban “because it goes against freedom of speech.”
“That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced,” he wrote. “Something needs to change.”
X is banned in China alongside other major U.S. social media and news apps and websites, including YouTube, Google, Facebook and many major U.S. media.