(CNN) President Donald Trump's ongoing battle with TikTok is becoming one of the most curious chapters in America's emerging cold war with China. If Microsoft and TikTok cannot pull off this purchase by mid-September -- a tall order for a deal of this size -- Trump pulls the plug on its US operation. Whether or not Trump has good reason, as Cheeseman puts it, to shut down TikTok is open to debate. TikTok itself does not operate in China and, in the case of the US, TikTok maintains that users' data is stored on servers inside the US. Even if Trump gets his way and TikTok is banned, Cheeseman said the US will still hand the Chinese government a propaganda consolation prize.

Source: CNN August 08, 2020 07:07 UTC