TikTok Employees Are Being Singled Out For Interrogation At U.S. Border

Now, Forbes has learned from sources in a position to know and materials that more than 30 TikTok employees entering the U.S. have been stopped at the border and faced similar questioning from Customs and Border Protection. According to the sources, many of these employees are Chinese and are employed across ByteDance and TikTok in a variety of capacities, including in data engineering and machine learning. The questions that CBP agents have asked employees have focused on the relationship between TikTok and ByteDance and the companies' billion-dollar effort to wall off private information about American TikTok users from Chinese employees, known internally as Project Texas. CBP agents have asked the employees about their access to U.S. TikTok users' data, where the company's U.S. data centers are, and what their involvement is with Project Texas. The interrogations of TikTok employees come alongside an increase in CBP questioning of Chinese students and academics - especially those working in the sciences - at U.S. borders, a signal of increasing fear of technological espionage from China. Forbes reporting showed that information including creators' and advertisers' bank information and social security numbers were stored in China, despite congressional testimony from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in March 2023 that "American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore in the past." Following Forbes reporting about the data storage, Senate leaders questioned TikTok about the "Incorrect claims." Foreign TikTok and ByteDance employees are finding it harder to travel to the U.S. for work.