Mike Pompeo predicts TikTok will stop sharing U.S. data once ownership dispute settles

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said he believes that TikTok will stop sharing the information of U.S. users with the Chinese government after a dispute regarding the ownership of the hugely popular Chinese-owned app is resolved.

Earlier this month, President Trump issued executive orders that ban TikTok, saying it poses a threat to U.S. national security. Mr. Trump’s order against the video-sharing mobile app bars any transactions with its Chinese parent company starting mid-September, when the company must find an American owner such as Microsoft, or the video app will be shut down.

“I predict that TikTok will no longer share its private information that belonged to the American people with the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Pompeo told CNBC Friday. “I am confident that they won’t be doing that when this is over.”

TikTok, a video-sharing mobile application owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., has raised concerns in Washington for capturing automatically vast swaths of information from its users. The app is popular with young Americans and more than a third of its 49 million daily active users are 14 years old or younger.

Several federal agencies had already banned TikTok from government devices prior to Mr. Trump’s executive order, including the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. military personnel. The U.S. Senate then passed legislation earlier this month to ban TikTok from all federal government devices.

“I don’t know how it ends, I don’t what the conclusion is, but the American mission, the mission of our national security team, is to make sure that America’s private information isn’t shared with the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence services,” Mr. Pomeo said. “I promise you, when we get to the end of this, that won’t be happening.”