More than 30 TikTok employees have been reportedly interrogated by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers after arriving in the U.S. These workers, many of whom are Chinese nationals working for TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance, were pulled aside by CBP for additional questioning. Some of the flagged employees work in machine learning or data engineering.
Reports indicate that CBP agents inquired about these employees’ access to U.S. users’ TikTok data, the location of U.S.-based TikTok’s data centers, and their individual involvement with Project Texas — an initiative designed to shield U.S. users’ data from ByteDance‘s China-based employees that insiders have admitted is “largely cosmetic.”
The line of questioning wasn’t limited to professional matters. CBP questioning extended to personal matters, including TikTok employees’ potential affiliations with the Chinese Communist Party and their educational and political background in China. Sources indicate that TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who is Singaporean, also faced similar an interrogation.
The news follows Joe Biden’s signing into law legislation forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok within one year or see the social media app banned in the U.S. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been investigating ByteDance since 2019 and, in 2023, recommended that the U.S. ban TikTok unless ByteDance divests from it. This week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry hinted that the Communist country may retaliate against the U.S. if it enforces the legislation.
