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Analysts suggested it was “only a matter of time” before the US ban on TikTok spreads to allied countries and beyond – if the Trump administration decides to keep it offline.
The app was disabled in the United States after US lawmakers ruled it posed a national security risk due to owner ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government – ties it denies.
New President Trump, however, has indicated that he is opposed to the ban and will find a way to overturn it.
If the U.S. ban stands, experts point to the past ousting of Chinese and Russian tech companies over national security concerns as a potential model for how the TikTok ban could spread around the world.
“There are big parallels between TikTok and what happened with China’s Huawei and Russia’s Kaspersky, indicating that it’s only a matter of time before a phased ban takes effect,” says Emily Taylor, editor-in-chief of Cyber Policy Journal.
In both cases, these companies were accused by the United States of posing a national security threat – but cybersecurity authorities never revealed any hard evidence.
The same thing happened with TikTok.
Under President Trump, Kaspersky’s flagship antivirus software was banned from civilian and military computers in the United States after accusations emerged in 2017 that it was used by the Kremlin in a hacking incident computer science which has never been proven.
The United Kingdom followed almost immediately and, one after another, its allies complied with the restrictions, warnings or bans.
It took years, but finally a nationwide ban went into effect last year in the United States, but it was virtually redundant by then. Kaspersky closed its US operations and then its UK offices, saying there was no viable business there.
The company has always maintained that the U.S. government based its decision on “geopolitical climate and theoretical concerns” rather than independent verification of risks.
According to a Bitsight study, the decline in Kaspersky usage after the ban was pronounced, not only in the United States, but also in at least 25 other countries, even in those without an overt public policy. banning the software.
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The United States led a creeping ban against Kaspersky
Almost exactly the same thing happened with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
The United States has accused Huawei and other Chinese technology companies of being too close to the Chinese government. He argued that the company’s popular 5G kit should not be used to build telecommunications in case it could be used to spy on or degrade communications.
A former Huawei staffer in the UK said that once the US decided to ban, block or restrict Huawei, it became almost inevitable that its allies would follow.
“The UK and others have talked about drawing their own independent conclusions on security, but the US has lobbied relentlessly behind closed doors. It has warned of national security risks , which have never been supported by evidence,” said the former insider, who did not want to be named.
Intense lobbying by the United States of its allies on security issues is a phenomenon often observed in many aspects of cyber policy.
The piercing gaze of the Five Eyes
This usually starts with the countries of the Five Eyes Alliance.
The close intelligence-sharing agreement exists between five English-speaking democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
So far, all members have banned TikTok from government devices and some have also issued public warnings. Canada has ordered the end of TikTok’s Canadian operations, citing national security concerns.
The ripple effect of Five Eyes can be considerable and restrictions have already become widespread, with the app banned on the devices of government employees, civil servants or military personnel in countries including Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Taiwan.
Ciaran Martin, who led the UK’s National Cyber Security Center during the Huawei and Kaspersky bans, agrees that generally when the US makes a national security or strategic decision about a company, the UK and its allies eventually follow suit.
However, as with all things TikTok, he says there is a huge caveat to the new Trump administration.
“What we don’t know yet is whether TikTok will be the exception since Trump has said he opposes the ban, and will he order his allies to replicate a ban? We don’t know Not yet.”
Trump’s stance on TikTok has changed dramatically since his first presidency when he tried to get it banned. Since then, he has become a supporter after his re-election campaign gained support through TikTok videos.
Emily Taylor agrees that this unknown factor could make TikTok different from Huawei and Kaspersky.
“It depends on how much pressure the administration is prepared to exert,” she told the BBC.
“If their foreign policy agenda is busy, forcing other allies to follow the ban could fall to the bottom of the list and allow countries to wait.”
At the moment there are “no plans” to ban TikTok in the UK, a government spokesperson said on Saturday. “We are working with all the major social media companies to understand their plans to keep UK data secure and to ensure they meet the high standards of data protection and cybersecurity that we expect.”
The West – and the rest
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Huawei Technologies opened a headquarters in Zambia where it invested in major digital infrastructure projects
Another aspect to consider regarding TikTok’s upcoming post-US ban is whether or not the app can continue to thrive without a US customer base.
Any app that loses 170 million users would suffer, but U.S. users in particular are valuable to creators, advertisers, and direct spending in the TikTok Shop.
If the rest of the West follows, it will reduce the flow of money into the company and curtail the development of new features, thereby cementing the dominance of American platforms like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat.
TikTok is already banned in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India – a huge market. It is not present in China because of its sister app Douyin.
Both Kaspersky and Huawei have managed to weather the storms by relying on a local customer base and looking to regions like Africa and the Middle East.
So it might be possible for TikTok to build its user base here. But if the US ban spreads worldwide, the app will likely never be as big as it is now and may well wither and die a slow death.
