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. governmentтАЩs determination to ban the app. But itтАЩs not as out-of-left-field as it sounds and would carry its own potential harms.
The worldтАЩs wealthiest man has long said he hopes to create an “everything app,тАЭ 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, itтАЩs 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 isnтАЩt sold by itтАЩs Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
