Trump TikTok Deal Shows U.S. Tech War With China Is Faltering

On September 25, US President Donald Trump signed an executive thing that he would allow Tiktok to continue working in the country while compliance with national security concerns. After a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on September 19, Trump said he had reached an agreement for an American investor group led by Oracle to control 80 percent of American Takhk. But with the appearance of details, dangerous questions are going on the surface.

On the one hand, the national security concerns that prompted congress to issue a law prohibiting Tiktok in the first place without a solution. Tiktok algorithm – “Secret Smile” that governs what users see on the application and possibly as a major weapon for Chinese effects – will remain in the hands of Bytedance. Under the deal, a copy of the US Investors Group will be licensed, which will be trained using data from users in the United States.

But this still leaves a large vulnerability. What happens, for example, when Bytedance updates updates to its algorithm? Will the US version update to work in parallel with the Bytedance version of the application? Instead of cutting ties with China, the deal allows Beijing to keep great influence.

The Trump administration is expected to collect billions of fees from the deal. As Trump described it, “The United States gets huge fees-I call it excessive fees-only to connect the deal, and I do not want to expel it from the window.”

In addition, the application control in an inappropriate process will be loaded to Trump’s allies who chose it, with Larry Elison and Ruert Murdoch connecting to the investor group. This strikes many observers as a classic case of patronage capitalism.

“In an interview with President Joe Biden mail. “It seems that it is mostly open to those who are already close to the administration, including its political supporters.” The Trump plate, chosen by Al-Karaz, will not only give his political allies a financial payment, but also will also open the door to decisions to modify partisan content that can exaggerate the preceding views of the precedent during the suppression of critics-the same issues raised by current and former officials regarding Chinese ownership.

The series of events represented by the executive order of Tiktok, as well as the recent deals concluded by Trump, raises a greater question: Will the American president give up the American technological war against China?

Trump himself was responsible for starting the technological war in 2018 by placing the Chinese technology giant ZTE in a black commercial list, which mainly imposed a “death penalty” on the company. At that time, national security experts criticized former President Barack Obama for being very slow to recognize the risks from China. They argued that he was distorting his attention from the Syrian civil war, the wreckage of Libya, the Iranian nuclear program, and the threat of the Islamic state, while Trump had realized the real risks of the growing authority of Beijing.

So far in his second term, Trump has treated a completely different direction.

When Trump returned To his post in January, the technological war of the United States against China was in full swing. Over the past four years, Biden stressed export controls against Beijing with an unprecedented degree. Stopping the spread of semiconductor chips has become a unique preoccupation. Multiple bases have tried to pressure China’s ability to obtain sophisticated small chips, essential to operate large artificial intelligence models (AI) or advanced military equipment.

the New York Times Biden’s efforts are described as closer to “declaring economic war on China.” For Biden officials, the strategy was simple: keeping “large bullets as possible” against Chinese technology using a set of export controls, coordinating with allies to strangle Beijing to high technology, and supporting chips at home. When Chinese officials objected to technology control meetings in the United States, Times She stated that US officials answered that these measures were “national security matters” and not open for discussion.

As Biden’s state approached, he had an additional card to play. Just a few days before Trump’s inauguration, his administration released the base of the spread of Amnesty International, governing how models and chips can be shared with foreign countries. It was a bold attempt to preserve the technology of artificial intelligence in the hands of the United States and its allies and prevent the main competitors of Washington – Qina, Russia, Iran and Venezuela – from receiving sensitive technology that can enhance or use armies to use in the United States against the United States.

Analysts expected that Trump will retain a large -scale recovery strategy. However, from the beginning, Trump seemed more preoccupied with customs duties on Canada, Mexico or Europe to reduce the trade deficit more than the budget for China or Russia. (In fact, while Trump threatened to punish Russia if President Vladimir Putin did not seek peace in Ukraine, he has not issued any new sanctions against Russian goods or services.)

The Trump team also reflects a changing mentality. Technology officials sitting at its administration – the White House AI CZAR DAVID SACKS and the Great Science and Technology Adviser support a bleak vision of export controls.

These advisers have argued that the best strategy for the United States is to expand strongly in foreign markets, sign deals with governments to close American technology, and exploit commercial advantages to secure “global technological dominance”. In May, by May, the Trump team got rid of the base of Amnesty International Biden.

Meanwhile, the Chinese hawks inside the administration, led by the then National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, found themselves a marginalization. In April, the extreme right -wing influenced, Laura Lummer, met Trump at the White House and gave him a list of people who believed that they were not desirable in his agenda. Many people in the list are National Security Council officials who work for Waltz. After the meeting, Trump immediately launched six council employees. After several weeks, the Pallis overthrew his position.

The bags did not find himself with the revival of his agenda, but Trump also increased increasingly under the influence of the CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang. Huang had gone on what New York Times It is described as a “pressure raid” in Washington to retreat against the controls of exporting artificial intelligence.

Huang has argued that the ban on American technology from China has led to reverse results, giving China more urgency to develop its own products. He claimed that the Chinese army would not use NVIDIA chips and even retreat from the description of China as an opponent, describing Beijing as a “competitor” but “not an enemy.”

Huang’s convincing views have been proven. One of the largest NVIDIA requests was for Trump to turn a previous decision to ban sales to China from the company’s H20 chip, which is very important to address artificial intelligence inference. In June, after a visit at the White House from Huang, Trump released a reflection, although he came with hunting. NVIDIA and another semiconductor, AMD, Washington, will give a 15 percent reduction of its revenues from chips sales to China for permission to resume these transactions.

Trump told reporters: “I said,” I want 20 percent if I will agree to this for you. “For the country, for our country. I do not want that myself … [Huang] He said, “Will you make it 15?” So we negotiate a small deal. “

Since his return to office, Trump has repeated the national security classification repeatedly in favor of economic interests. Trump May’s trip to the Middle East, where it stopped in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, is a good example. The main goal of the visit was the mediator with billions of artificial intelligence deals. In the United Arab Emirates, Trump has reached an agreement to build a huge complex for the data center in Abu Dhabi that could support up to 2.5 million NVIDIA B200 chips, greater than any other project for Amnesty International’s infrastructure outside the United States. (An investment company for the Emirati will join the Tiktok Alliance)

Fears about the wisdom of handing over a rare strategic resource have been pushed to unreliable partners – or concerns that Chinese companies will reach the new computing power in the Gulf to train their own models – aside. “The option, do we want these countries to be the Pig bank for American Amnesty International or for the Chinese International Organization?”

It did not harm that these deals have proven to be profitable for the Trump family. Reporting New York Times It revealed that the UAE has agreed to invest two billion dollars in the world, Liberty Financial, an encrypted company in the work in which Trump has a share, while the deal of artificial intelligence chips was negotiated. As with GULF AI deals and Tiktok Agreement, Trump saw an opportunity to make profit and seize them, despite the broader consequences.

At this point, it is no longer clear whether the deterrence of China is still a priority for Trump’s higher national security. Starting in 2017, when he issued his national security strategy and announced the return of the “Great Power Contest”, the main focus of the United States was to deter China and Russia. However, it is said that the upcoming national defense strategy turns into this concept on his head. Instead of keeping China a major security challenge to the United States, the document instead gives priority to protecting the homeland and half of the Western ball.

As a result, signals that come out of the White House can be sharply contradictory. For several months, Trump officials laid the basis for issuing a major political statement – AI’s action plan at the White House. Their goal was to provide a clear set of guidelines on how Trump supported this critical technology and ensuring US leadership.

The document was released in July. One of the main pillars was to enhance artificial intelligence export controls. I have warned that “depriving our foreign opponents from reaching this resource, then, represents the issue of geological competition and national security.”

However, as the plan published, Trump announced that he had lifted the ban on the sale of H20 chips in NVIDIA to China, allowing critical artificial intelligence technology to flow again to the country. For US allies (in addition to its competitors), it was difficult to know what he made from this policy. Was the message that export controls are still important? Or was Trump sending another sign – make the right deal with me and all the rules are negotiable?

What is clear is that politics belongs to Trump and “whoever spoke to him the last time”, which led to a situation-described by scientists Abraham Newman and Henry Farrell-where the personality “replaces the bureaucratic decision” and “profit in the short term outperforms a long-term national interest.”

Where the United States Technological war goes to guessing anyone. While the largest part of the American political establishment is still aligning with China and does not trust the intentions of something, this matters in Washington Trump. In the end, he will have the final statement. Currently, Trump is installed to travel to Beijing for the eleventh meeting in early 2026. New York Times I stated that the Minister of Trade Howard Lootnik has already started to recruit executives to obtain a possible delegation, “a competition for who will get Air Force One.”

In the period before this meeting, Trump will hate to push China strongly on the export controls. However, Shi will not hesitate to exploit Trump’s passion for high -level visit to Beijing for safe political concessions, including whipped export controls for advanced chips, expanding Washington’s support to Taiwan, and providing a “open and fair environment” for Chinese companies to invest in the United States. (Experts have criticized Chinese investments in American companies to enable critical intellectual property theft.)

Currently, the American technology war is attached to balance, with increasing signs that Trump will give up major components when it suits the moment.