TikTok’s leaders have spent much of this year telling Washington insiders the company was moving forward with Project Texas, a plan to run the viral video app in a way that alleviates U.S. government concerns about potential meddling by China.
The reality isn’t so simple. Project Texas requires Oracle, the app’s cloud provider, to monitor for malicious activity as well as inspect the app’s prized algorithm, which decides which videos users see, and to report any anomalies to the feds. TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, told Congress in March that Oracle “has already begun inspecting TikTok’s source code and will have unprecedented access to the related algorithms and data models.” That statement tells only part of the story.
