Too Fun to Check: Could Musk Buy TikTok?

Too fun to check? Or too worrisome to check?

Let’s face it — anything that takes the data-trawling platform known as TikTok out of the hands of Chinese intelligence would be an improvement. However, a sale to the man who both outright owns X/Twitter and the incoming president’s ear should at least inspire a little chin-stroking.

Chins are being stroked in Beijing, according to Bloomberg:

Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok if the company fails to fend off a controversial ban on the short-video app, according to people familiar with the matter.

Beijing officials strongly prefer that TikTok remains under the ownership of parent ByteDance Ltd., the people say, and the company is contesting the impending ban with an appeal to the US Supreme Court. But the justices signaled during arguments on Jan. 10 that they are likely to uphold the law. Senior Chinese officials had already begun to debate contingency plans for TikTok as part of an expansive discussion on how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk, said the people, asking not to be identified revealing confidential discussions.

A potential high-profile deal with one of Trump’s closest allies holds some appeal for the Chinese government, which is expected to have some say over whether TikTok is ultimately sold, said the people. Musk spent more than $250 million supporting Trump’s re-election, and has been tapped for a prominent role in improving government efficiency after the Republican takes office.

That certainly makes sense from the standpoint of TikTok being an influence-peddling operation. What would Beijing have done if Joe Biden had stuck around and won a second term? Sell it to Hunter Biden in some sort of partnership with venture capital? That might have been a possibility, and that’s what this feels like too.

On the other hand, Musk does a lot of business in China already with Tesla. Perhaps Beijing is less interested in currying favor with Trump and more interested in having leverage over whoever does end up with TikTok and its phishy algorithms. Being the world’s wealthiest man and also being on a trajectory to become the world’s wealthiest man in human history means that any leverage will be pretty limited, though. Musk took a risk on Twitter that could have amounted to setting $44 billion on fire, and he came out the other side even wealthier than before. 

Would Musk even want TikTok? Bloomberg suggests that Musk could merge the platforms and cut its operational costs, plus the advertisers on TikTok would likely spill over onto X/Twitter. They also note that TikTok could be a gigantic trove of data for Musk’s AI ambitions, although one would think that X/Twitter itself probably suffices. However, China wouldn’t sell TikTok for a song and dance, and would Musk really want to pony up the massive amount of money it would require to buy another social-media platform?

Maybe, but that would also distract Musk from some of the ambitious plans he has for the incoming administration. DOGE is more or less a personal project in partnership with Vivek Ramaswamy, not something Musk is likely to delegate to beancounters. At the same time, Musk’s SpaceX has ambitious plans of its own for space exploration and a manned mission to Mars. Both of those seem more pressing and important than making sure narcissistic teens have a platform to display their dancing talents to the world, by which I mean mainly each other. 

But then again, there were plenty of reasons why it didn’t make sense for Musk to buy Twitter, either. In fact, Musk himself at one point balked and had to be forced back into the deal with threatened legal action. He may not regret the purchase now, and the rest of us have greatly benefited from it with the exposure of the Big Brother censorship efforts by the federal government, but Musk certainly wasn’t unconflicted about it at the time. And now he has much more at stake, too, just to set it all aside for a rerun of sorts.