White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro Monday cast doubts on whether Microsoft should be able to buy Chinese short-video app TikTok from China's ByteDance, as it still has servers and software in China and could be compromised.
"Microsoft, through its Bing search engine that operates in China, through Skype calls, effectively are enablers of Chinese censorship surveillance and monitoring," Navarro told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco, other American companies in the tech land helped China build its great firewall used basically to imprison Chinese citizens."
He added that he questions if, "given China's civil-military infusion which requires any foreign company operating on Chinese soil to give them their data," if the United States "can trust any company that operates in China, has servers in China and software in China, to protect your children? That's a question I think that needs to be asked."
On CNN Monday, Navarro pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party also uses Microsoft's programming to "do all the things they do."
"This not a white hat company," he said. "It's an American company. It's clearly a multi-national company that's made billions in China."
President Donald Trump has agreed to give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate the sale to Microsoft, China's ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular short-video app TikTok to Microsoft Corp, two people familiar with the matter said Sunday.
Friday, however, Trump dismissed the idea of a sale to Microsoft and said he plans to ban the app in the United States over concerns that the Chinese government uses it to mine data from Americans.
Microsoft CE Satya Nadella said in a statement that after a discussion with Trump, it will go ahead with negotiations to buy TikTok, which is highly popular among younger users, and to reach a deal by Sept. 15.