Tech giant Oracle will oversee the security for a licensed copy of the recommendation engine powering TikTok under the terms of a proposed divestment deal, according to a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday.

Determining next steps for the algorithm, currently owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, has been one of the most closely watched issues during negotiations over TikTok’s future.

The
official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the emerging deal, said
the administration believes the plan will satisfy national security
concerns if TikTok divests from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. President
Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation before leaving office that required the Chinese company to sell its assets to an American company or face a ban.

U.S.
officials have previously warned the algorithm that fuels what users
see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who
can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult
to detect.

“It
wouldn’t be in compliance if the algorithm is Chinese. There can’t be
any shared algorithm with ByteDance,” said a spokesperson for the House
Select Committee on China.

Oracle would receive a copy of the
algorithm and oversee the app’s security operations. The algorithm would
be “fully inspected” and monitored for any abnormal behavior, the
senior White House official said Monday.

In a call with reporters,
the official later emphasized that the content recommendation formula
would be retrained using U.S. data in order to make sure the system is
“behaving appropriately.” It is currently unclear whether retraining the
copy of the algorithm would essentially create a separate TikTok
experience just for domestic U.S. users, but White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt claimed in a Monday press briefing that “TikTok users
in the U.S will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries
and vice versa.”

According
to the White House official, “What the president will sign later this
week is an executive order, essentially declaring that the terms of this
deal meet America’s national security needs,” noting that China is
expected to sign and approve a framework deal for TikTok’s divestment by
the end of the week, upon which Trump will issue a 120-day reprieve,
giving both nations time to get necessary agreements finalized.

Full
details on investors have not been released. However, the official
confirmed that the U.S. operations will be a new joint venture with a
board of directors that will have a majority of American members—Oracle
and Silver Lake, a private equity firm, are the only confirmed
consortium participants so far.

The White House official also said
that under the preliminary deal—which still requires Chinese officials
to sign off on a framework agreement—the U.S. will not take equity stake
in the new venture or have representation on the controlling committee.

Trump has extended the deadline several times as he worked to reach a deal to keep TikTok available. He spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.

—By Chris Megerian, Associated Press