While questions about Washington continue to swirl about the future of Tiktok, the name of one potential freer for the popular video app remains: Oracle.
On Tuesday, Oracle met top staff on Capitol Hill to talk about how the American tech giant, who processes and serves Tiktok user data, is planning to work with the Chinese video app in the United States in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting that were not authorized to speak publicly.
The questions came when Tiktok is staring at a deadline of 5 April for a federal law that prohibits its distribution in the country if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner. The owner of Tiktok is the Chinese internet company Bytedance, and the Chinese ties have asked questions about whether the app is a national security threat in the United States.
During Tuesday's meeting, the assistants also raised the subject whether Oracle would be involved in running Tiktok, after a recent policico report that the company was talking to the White House about a deal, one of the people said. The assistants sought the guarantees of Oracle that every deal would meet the law.
The meeting, which was requested by assistants, included employees for the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, speaker Mike Johnson's Office and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said two people with knowledge of the meeting.
Tiktok is still confronted with a political scrambling about her future. In January, President Trump delayed the enforcement of the law that would forbid Tiktok from the United States, which gave the congress with dual support to the work and which was unanimously maintained by the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump has promised to close a deal for the app to protect national security and in February vice -president JD Vance tapped to find an arrangement to make it.
Oracle is a natural competition to be part of a deal for Tiktok. The company is already a tech partner of Tiktok in the United States, and it offers the app when President Trump wanted to force a sale of Bytedance in his first term.
The White House, not the congress, will ultimately decide whether a deal for TIKTOK can continue. It is unclear whether Oracle is currently interested in the app. Tiktok and Oracle refused to comment. The White House also did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
As the deadline approaches of 5 April, Republican legislators and other China Hawks who supported the law have expressed concern that Tiktok and Bytedance can try to close a deal with the Trump government that will keep Chinese influence on the app and its powerful algorithm.
The laws say that a deal that does not meet the requirements of the law will undermine national security and can lead to lawsuits of shareholders against the technology companies that Tiktok distribute and hosts in the United States.
“The law is clear: every deal must eliminate Chinese influence and control over the app to protect our interests,” Republist John Moolenaar, a Republican by Michigan, chairman of the house committee that has focused on China, wrote on Tuesday in the National Review in an opinion column on Tuesday. He said that he was “dedicated to ensure that every deal with TIKTOK meets the clear legal requirements established by the congress.”
Mr. VANCE told NBC News last week that by 5 April there will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think it meets our national security problems, allows there to be a separate American Tiktok company. “
Mr. Trump said this month that although he was optimistic that Tiktok would close a deal for the deadline, he was open to extending the deadline.
Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and Chief Technology Officer, joined Mr Trump in January for an announcement about an artificial initiative of $ 100 billion. During the event, Mr. Trump said that Elon Musk or Oracle could buy Tiktok and emphasized his 'right to close a deal'.
Mr. Trump's break when maintaining the law asked questions about whether the president uses the rule of law or the boundaries of executive power. Some experts have said that the conflict represents the start of a constitutional crisis.
Tiktok argued for at least a year that a sale of the company would be impossible, partly because the Chinese government would not allow the export of the most important algorithm of Tiktok.
