A few things are curious to me about all of this, which leads me to believe it’s political posturing.
The EU has a similar arrangement to the US in that they have an “auditor partner” and host the entirety of the EU infrastructure and services within the EU. The EU is not taking severe business actions in the shadow of undisclosed national security grounds.
There’s frequent statements about “massive data collection”. What data? I can only find IP addresses and volunteered contact information being collected. TikTok doesn’t have access to device location data, so IP addresses are the closest there is to geo location. TikTok has said they scrub that when stored - easy to verify.
TikTok has given their auditor (at least in the US) access to the recommendation engine algos. I assume that access comes with some ability to confirm what they audit is what’s actually in use, but haven’t seen reporting that confirms it.
And finally I don’t understand why so many politicians, including all presidential candidates and a not insignificant number of congressional members use TikTok.
Just some of the reasons I think this is more special interest/politically motivated rather than actual national security issues that would be any different than other socials.