The idea of Elon Musk as a potential buyer for TikTok may seem like the craziest development yet in the saga of the U.S. government¡¯s determination to ban the app. But it¡¯s not as out-of-left-field as it sounds and would carry its own potential harms.
The world¡¯s wealthiest man has long said he hopes to create an ¡°everything app,¡± and incorporating TikTok into X, formerly Twitter, would take him a step toward that goal. It could also offer a potential goldmine of training content for his artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
And as a close ally of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned to save the app, it¡¯s less surprising that his name came up as part of potential deal-making with Beijing. TikTok has all but exhausted its legal avenues to overturn the law that would ban the platform in the U.S. if it isn¡¯t sold by it¡¯s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
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