The Biden administration has made it clear: Chinese-owned TikTok must be sold or face looming consequences. In a surprising shift of policy, the White House has now explicitly threatened to ban the popular video-sharing app if its owners, Beijing-based ByteDance, don’t divest. This directive will almost certainly be met with a legal challenge from TikTok’s parent company.

Though the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) adopted measures to prevent users’ data from being mishandled, the Biden administration still claims that the safety of Americans’ data needs to be better safeguarded. ByteDance’s “Project Texas” plan deploys a firewall between TikTok and the Beijing parent company and also creates independent monitors and auditors to ensure that no entity will access U.S. user data. Despite the