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Comment by DogOfTheGaps | Hacker News Reader

This is likely explanation why Oracle was able to acquire TikTok's operation, despite the fact it does not seem to be a good fit at all: https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-president-trump-...

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That's just speculation. Recall that Microsoft was rejected by TikTok leaving Oracle as the sole contender.

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microso...

The way I am reading this is that Microsoft put some many security restrictions in place that they would be eliminated.

Me thinks this was all a massive gambit to win the JEDI deal, hobble Oracle with a turd, and then pull out.

Can you elaborate upon the corporate strategy you are seeing?

> Weeks later, China issued new regulations that would essentially bar TikTok from transferring its technology to a foreign buyer without explicit permission from the Chinese government.

> The Chinese regulations helped scuttle the effort by Microsoft, which said the only way it could both protect the privacy of TikTok users in the United States and prevent Beijing from using the app as a venue for disinformation was to take over the computer source code underlying the app, and the algorithms that determine what videos are seen by the 100 million Americans who use it each month.

This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another, or Oracle wouldn't be the last man standing. This is going to be a shitshow.

Nah, all that Microsoft is trying to imply is that Oracle doesn’t give a shit about security engineering, and that the goofy geopolitical business alone does nothing for users. It’s plausible.

> This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another

Oracle also has ties to Trump. This stinks.

Every company at this level has ties to the executive branch, and much more. Remember last year when the DoD wrote Microsoft a $10 billion check?

There’s a difference with having a contract with a department and being best buddies with an autocrat wannabe. Who then signs an executive order and invokes national security on very shaky grounds to force a sale.

Still, I’m not saying that the $10B DoD contract and the way they tortured the process to avoid giving it to Amazon did not stink as well. Or that Amazon as a company is fine. There can be more than one festering carcass in a swamp.

The Trump admin is strongly suspected of handing the JEDI contract of Microsoft and Oracle was one of the plaintiffs suing over bias.

I don’t think “being able to acquire” an organization or operations requires a “good fit,” but the reason for wanting to would.

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