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President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that suspends the U.S. government’s ban of TikTok for 75 days.
The directive was included in a batch of technology-focused executive orders that Trump signed late Monday. Another renamed the United States Digital Service, a government office that helps maintain federal websites, and granted it new responsibilities. Trump also rescinded an earlier executive order that focused on artificial intelligence safety.
TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S. over the weekend after a law banning the app went into effect. The legislation, which the company had unsuccessfully tried to appeal, prohibits tech firms from hosting TikTok’s backend infrastructure or distributing the service via their app stores. Companies that fail to comply with the ban are subject to fines of up to $5,000 per TikTok user.
In the executive order signed late Monday, Trump instructed the Justice Department to avoid enforcing those penalties for 75 days. Oracle Corp. and Akamai Technologies Inc., two of the tech firms that stopped providing services to TikTok after the ban came into effect, have reportedly resumed working with the app. Google LLC and Apple Inc. have not yet returned TikTok to their respective app stores.
Some legal experts believe the executive order may not hold up in court. Under the law that banned TikTok, the president can suspend the ban for up to 90 days if parent company ByteDance Ltd. demonstrates that it’s making progress toward selling the service. There’s currently no sign that such progress has been made.
Several potential buyers are believed to be circling in TikTok. AI developer Perplexity AI Inc., for example, has reportedly floated a merger with the app’s U.S. business. Such a deal could reportedly value the business at $50 billion.
Alongside the executive order that suspends the ban, Trump on Monday issued several other tech-focused directives.
The first rescinds an AI-focused executive order that former President Joe Biden signed last year. Under the latter order, AI companies were required to test the safety of new frontier models and share the results with the government. Additionally, the directive sought to encourage the development of technical standards for AI safety testing.
Another executive order signed by Trump focuses on the United States Digital Service, a government office that supports federal agencies’ information technology operations. One of its focus areas is improving federal websites.
The executive order renames the office to the U.S. DOGE Service, or USDS, after the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. It instructs the head of the USDS to launch an initiative focused on improving federal agencies’ IT infrastructure. One focus of the project will be to boost interoperability between federal agencies’ networks to ease data sharing.
The executive order also assigns additional responsibilities to the newly renamed office. In partnership with the USDS, each government agency will have to establish a “DOGE Team” comprising at least four staffers. Those staffers will typically include a team lead, an engineer, a human resources manager and an attorney tasked with prompting government efficiency initiatives.
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