As Oracle tries to buy TikTok, a look at how the company started embracing and building ties with Donald Trump and his administration after the 2016 election
from the early days of the administration to an ill-fated hydroxychloroquine study in March — as it tries to buy TikTok. https://www.nytimes.com/... Lauren Hirsch / @laurenshirsch : In today's @DealBook, @dmccabe spoke w/ us abt his story on Oracle's relationship w/ President Trump, and the “grudge-match intensity” w/ which its lobbyists have taken on Google & Amazon. Story- https://www.nytimes.com/... DealBook - https://www.nytimes.com/... Frederike Kaltheuner / @f_kaltheuner : The irony: Oracle - a data broker, which is literally in the business of selling data - wants to buy TikTok, which has become under attack for being an app that collects lots of data https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The NYT piece traces the road Oracle traveled from 2016 outsider to insider: building ties with Donald Trump's administration, running an ill-fated hydroxychloroquine study in March, and unleashing lobbyists with what DealBook calls "grudge-match intensity" against Google and Amazon. That groundwork is the backdrop for ByteDance's proposal to the US Treasury naming Oracle as TikTok's "trusted technology provider".
The arc did not end in 2020. By 2023, Oracle staff were reviewing TikTok's source code on-site — beneath TikTok-controlled cameras, per China's government requirement — and by this year Oracle remains a leading contender to help run TikTok US, with ByteDance preferring it while wanting a hands-on operational role. The political relationship the NYT documents is the through-line of that five-year run.
First-order effects
- Oracle's Treasury proposal recasts its TikTok play from buyer to national-security-vetted infrastructure provider, a role only credible because of the administration ties documented since 2016.
- Google and Amazon — the targets of Oracle's grudge-match lobbying — face a rival that can convert political access into deal-shaping leverage neither can easily match.
Second-order effects
- If Oracle secures the trusted-provider role, the data-broker irony critics flag — a company whose business is selling data vetting an app under attack for data collection — invites scrutiny of Oracle's own data practices alongside TikTok's.
- The source-code review arrangement, where Oracle's auditors work under TikTok-controlled cameras at Beijing's insistence, shows the limits of trust-based deals: oversight terms themselves become bargaining chips in any expanded Oracle role.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward national-security review becoming a market-shaping force in tech M&A, where politically connected vendors are installed as intermediaries for foreign-owned assets rather than deals being blocked outright.
- ByteDance's preference for Oracle while retaining hands-on control suggests a durable structure: foreign apps surviving US pressure by renting American political and technical legitimacy — a template other Chinese-owned services could follow.
The trend: US tech policy is turning politically connected American vendors into gatekeepers of foreign-owned platforms, with Oracle's five-year TikTok pursuit as the defining case.