A TikTok booth is seen during the opening day of Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, on August 21, 2024. (Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

More people might get to see the US government’s secret TikTok evidence

The American public is still trying to understand what the Chinese company is doing that would relegate it to being banned.

Matt Phillips, Rani Molla

8/23/24 10:39AM

We know that whatever caused the US government to try and ban TikTok is supposed to be big and bad.

But besides the vague idea that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to manipulate its algorithm, the US government has offered few details behind remarkable Congressional push to pass, and President Biden’s decision to sign, a law requiring TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to sell the app, or face at total ban.

Now lawyers for the company — which is appealing the law — are asking that a so-called special master be appointed to evaluated classified evidence and the government’s need for secrecy.

The fight over who in the case gets to see what evidence — much of which will remain unavailable to the broader public — highlights the difficulty Americans have in understanding just what the U.S. government is so concerned about, when it comes to the popular app.

"We've seen a lot of really, I would say, a lot of really confusing messaging from members of Congress about why specifically they want to ban TikTok. Some are saying it's because of data collection, some are saying it's because of propaganda. Others others are saying it's just because TikTok is too addictive," Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who studies strategic technologies, told Sherwood in April. “We haven't really gotten a really clear explanation from the government of what specifically they believe the risks are.”

Rani Molla

Tunnel Vision

20h

Tesla gets permit to test autonomous cars in Nevada as autonomous driving heats up there

Amazon’s self-driving Zoox launched service this week, and Google’s Waymo is testing there.

Las Vegas Exteriors And Landmarks - 2024

Jon Keegan

9/11/25

OpenAI and Microsoft reach agreement that moves OpenAI closer to for-profit status

In a joint statement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” for their renegotiated $13 billion partnership, which was a source of recent tension between the two companies.

Settling the agreement is a requirement to clear the way for OpenAI to convert to a for-profit public benefit corporation, which it must do before a year-end deadline to secure a $20 billion investment from SoftBank.

OpenAI also announced that the controlling nonprofit arm would hold an equity stake in the PBC valued at $100 billion, which would make it “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world.”

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

A joint statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Rani Molla

9/11/25

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal