How Israel Captured TikTok

Originally Published at The American Conservative

Reports that TikTok will transfer an 80 percent stake in its U.S. operations to Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz are celebrated in Washington as a strategic victory over China, where its parent company is based. But a closer examination of the deal reveals a different winner: the foreign government of Israel and its lobby in the United States.

Though the first campaign to ban TikTok originated in concerns of Chinese manipulation and data theft, that effort. . .