TikTok deal ensures US control of board and crucial algorithm, White House says (apnews.com)

The White House said an emerging deal between U.S. investors and ByteDance would place control of TikTok’s core recommendation algorithm and corporate governance in American hands, with tech firm Oracle responsible for data and security and Americans slated to hold six of seven seats on a U.S. oversight board. The announcement follows intensive negotiations — including a call between Presidents Trump and Xi — and comes as Congress has pushed legislation that could ban TikTok unless its U.S. operations are divested. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt emphasized that algorithm control is central to the agreement, though Oracle had not commented and key implementation details were not disclosed. For the AI/ML community, this is significant because it treats a production recommender system — the algorithmpowering TikTok’s feed — as strategic infrastructure whose ownership and governance have national-security implications. If implemented, the deal would create precedents about cross-border model custody, data localization, and auditability: how code, weights, training data access, and update pipelines are transferred, monitored, and verified will determine whether “control” is substantive or merely nominal. Practically, this raises technical questions about provenance, secure enclaves or escrow of models, third‑party audits, and ongoing oversight of personalization pipelines — issues that affect research collaboration, IP, and global deployment of high‑impact ML systems.