Posted originally on CTH on September 22, 2025 | Sundance
When it comes to presidential candidates, it’s worth remembering: The Kentucky Derby is won by horses, but it’s the owners who get the prize money.
In my opinion, Larry Ellison (Oracle) is the most strategic billionaire influencer, a long-term thinker, in the modern era. Larry Ellison is about to take control of TikTok, while his son David Ellison gains CBS and will likely move Bari Weiss into content control. Next up, CNN. Funnily enough, while Elon was the shiny thing, Larry smiled. Keep watching.
The framework of the U.S. TikTok deal is becoming clear. The New York Times has the best write up.
(NEW YORK TIMES) – The software giant Oracle will oversee the security of Americans’ data and monitor changes and updates to TikTok’s powerful recommendation technology under a new deal to avert a ban of the service, according to a senior White House official.
A copy of the algorithm, the recommendation engine that powers the app’s addictive feed of short videos, will be licensed from China to an American investor group that will oversee the app in the United States, the official said.
Oracle will also invest in the new American TikTok, as will the private equity firm Silver Lake, another senior official said.
It will be “secured” in the United States outside the control of TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, one of the officials said. The U.S.-run TikTok will work to retrain the copy on users’ data in the United States, and China will not have access to the data, the officials added.
The deal is an effort to meet the requirements of a law that would have banned TikTok in the United States unless ByteDance relinquished control of the app. It was intended to address national security concerns that the app’s ownership could give Beijing a channel to spread propaganda or to collect sensitive data about Americans.
[…] Under the terms of the deal, American companies will own around 80 percent of the American version of the app. ByteDance and other Chinese investors will own less than 20 percent.
In the United States, TikTok will be operated by a board of directors with national security and cybersecurity credentials, one of the senior officials said. ByteDance will choose one director on the seven-member board, and that person will be excluded from TikTok’s security committee.
The exact mix of investors has been in flux. Mr. Trump hinted this weekend that the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan were considering an investment, which could come through the media giant Fox Corporation, a person familiar with the talks said.
The president is expected to issue an executive order later this week that declares that the terms of the deal meet national security concerns. (read more)
As a social media system, TikTok is generally a U.S, North American and Asian platform. Europe is not a big factor and it’s nonexistent in Russia. If you map the nations with the highest density of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) the outcome will overlay with a heat map of TikTok’s strongest audience.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday morning, President Trump said that Michael Dell was “involved” in the deal, and that billionaires Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch would also “probably be in the group.”
The new investment entity created through the Technocratic deal would have a seven-member board of directors, with ByteDance allowed to choose one. The ByteDance-appointed board member would be excluded from the company’s security committee.
The Five-Eyes will have control over the user data, and the agenda of the sixth eye will be retained in the western algorithm.
Centinel2012 