WSJ What’s News - Beijing Discusses TikTok Sale to Musk
Episode Date: January 14, 2025A.M. Edition for Jan. 14. With a U.S. ban on TikTok looming, Chinese officials internally weigh the option of allowing Elon Musk to invest in or take control of the app’s U.S. operations. Plus, spec...ial counsel Jack Smith says Donald Trump would have been convicted over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election had prosecutors not been forced to drop the case. WSJ reporter Sadie Gurman unpacks his newly released report. And Israel and Hamas are finalizing a Gaza cease-fire deal. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Chinese officials internally discussed the possibility of Elon Musk buying TikTok. Plus special counsel Jack Smith says Trump would have been convicted
over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election had the case not been dropped.
This is a very thorough description of the evidence that prosecutors had amassed.
And a deal to pause fighting in Gaza and free hostages could be hours away.
It's Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Kate Bulevant for the Wall Street Journal filling in for
Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business
stories moving your world today.
With a US ban on TikTok days away from taking effect, we report that Chinese officials have
internally discussed the possibility of allowing a trusted non-Chinese party, such as Elon
Musk, to invest in or take control of the app's US operations.
The US's decision to ban TikTok, unless its Chinese parent bite dance divests itself from
the social media platform is one of the many issues straining US-China relations.
According to people familiar with the discussions, Beijing views openness on that issue as one
possible card to play, with confrontations expected over tariffs and other issues. President-elect Trump has said he wants to find a way to let TikTok remain in the US.
Musk, one of his closest allies, has frequently met with top Chinese officials
and expressed favourable views about the country and its leadership.
In the past, Chinese leaders have denounced the US ban threat
and said a forced sale would
be akin to robbery. Bloomberg earlier reported on Beijing's discussions about a possible
deal with Musk. Asked about that report, a TikTok representative characterised it as
quote, pure fiction.
In a report made public overnight, special counsel Jack Smith has defended his decision to bring charges against Donald Trump
Over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election
According to Smith prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to convict Trump had they not been forced to drop the case
After his re-election last year
Sadie Gurman covers the Justice Department for the Journal.
This document represents the most detailed account to date of Smith's team's decision
making leading up to his unprecedented decision in August of 2023 to federally charge a former
president.
This report further infuriated Trump, but it won't have any impact on his path to the
White House because the Justice Department has a long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
And in fact, with Trump in the White House, he will be in a better position to potentially
take action against Smith and his team, which he and some of his nominees have already threatened
to do.
Posting on Truth Social today, Trump said the decision to release what he called fake
findings was deranged.
In his report, Smith, who resigned from the DOJ last week, pushed back against Trump's
repeated claims that the investigations were politicised.
We report that Israel and Hamas are finalizing a Gaza ceasefire deal and could strike an
agreement as soon as today.
Negotiators are meeting today in Doha, Qatar to finalize a draft of the deal.
President-elect Trump's designated Middle East envoy will be present, along with American,
Israeli and Arab officials.
The prospect of Donald Trump's return to office
seems to have galvanized both sides.
Arab and Israeli officials say Israel and Hamas
have agreed to the broad strokes of a deal,
which would stop the fighting in Gaza at least temporarily
and free some of the hostages held there.
However, talks could still fall apart,
as they have in previous rounds of negotiations.
Nearly 13 million people across Southern California remain under red flag warnings for fire risk as
powerful winds threaten to slow progress against a number of deadly wildfires there. Los Angeles
fire officials say they're better equipped to face the challenging conditions this week, with thousands of firefighters battling the two largest fires.
However, they're also bracing for new blazes to spark, with LA Fire Department Chief Kristen
Crowley warning, quote, we are not in the clear as of yet.
The disaster in Los Angeles is already shaping up to be the most expensive in modern history, according
to preliminary estimates, with Evercore ISI analysts projecting total losses to insurers
of up to $25 billion.
And for the LA Fire Department, battling this historic disaster has come with an added task
fighting misinformation.
Journal reporter Scott Calvert told the tech news briefing podcast about the spread of
social media rumours complicating the job of officials.
So the fires started on the same day that Metta said that they were going to be ending
the fact checking and removing the speech restrictions for Facebook and Instagram.
And even with whatever mechanisms they had in place, there's a fair amount of misinformation
swirling around.
And there's definitely a concern that we heard from public officials that it's going to make
the job that much harder for them.
And X is another platform where a lot of these things have been spreading since Elon Musk's
acquisition of X. One that gained a lot of traction just based on the views was
one that Alex Jones put out that alleged that LA firefighters were having to douse the flames
using quote ladies handbags because the department had donated some supplies to Ukraine a couple
years ago and so they were shorthanded as far as equipment goes. And according to the
LA fire department, these were actually canvas bags that are standard issue and are often used to douse these small trash fires
simply because it's faster and easier to fill those bags with water than to haul out the
hoses and connect them.
And in markets today, stock futures are rising after a volatile session yesterday that saw
the Nasdaq drop for a fourth day in a row.
And inflation-focused investors will be keeping an eye on the producer price index due at
8.30am Eastern ahead of its consumer equivalent, which drops tomorrow.
Coming up with Elon Musk's SpaceX and other rocket companies planning more space missions,
a traffic jam is forming at US launch sites. We'll take a look at potential answers to
that problem after the break.
What then will the future reveal?
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We all have a stake in the future. The future. The future. The future.
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the future.
That is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. America's launch pads are crowded, so reports the journal's Roshan Fernandez, who told our
Luke Vargas that rising demand for sending satellites and other payloads into space is
straining the few suitable sites that currently exist
for launches in the US.
So I would say there's three sites in the US that are responsible for almost every rocket
launch.
That's Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, the Kennedy Space Center, both of those in Florida
and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
And so the problem here at hand is that there's a couple of sites which are responsible for almost every
launch, and we're seeing more and more launches.
And on the demand side, Roshan SpaceX, right, has been the
primary rocket launcher to date. But it's not just SpaceX that
has plans to scale things up in the future. It's a whole bunch
of others.
Yeah, definitely. In 2024, SpaceX had 134 orbital launches,
and there were 145 total in the US so spacex
responsible for the vast majority of that traffic but you know we're also
going to see other rocket companies such as Amazon's project Kuiper satellite
network start to come online in the coming years and so with the added
players in the field there is going to be an added demand and perhaps a traffic jam coming.
And one of the sources who I spoke to told me, it's really risky to put all your eggs in one basket.
You could have a hurricane or a wildfire or a launch pad accident, take out one of these launch pads from commission,
and it could take months or who knows how long to get them back into running shape. All right. So we've talked then about the demand side. Let's hop over to supply.
Could we see changes there? I gather it was telling that those three sites you
mentioned were all along the coast,
but there's a lot more space that could conceivably be utilized for rocket
launches if the situation is right.
Yeah, there's a number of other possibilities that are kind of coming online here.
So like you mentioned, rockets are typically launched over water right now to go away from
populated areas.
But we do have other launch pads that haven't yet conducted a launch such as in Oklahoma.
And places like that are looking to pick up some of this additional demand so that when
you see smaller companies who can't find space
at Cape Canaveral, can't find space at Vandenberg to launch their rocket, maybe they'll come
to Oklahoma in five years or even sooner and say, okay, here's a place where I don't have
to jostle for space on a schedule.
I spoke to some folks in Alaska and that was another place where they have recorded orbital
launches in the past and so they're kind of looking to pick up on some of that additional demand as well.
Right, Alaska. This is on Kodiak Island, the Pacific Spaceport complex,
trying to get federal clearance to launch up to 25 times a year,
though they have already been launching before this.
There's that Oklahoma site that does have permission for certain types of launches.
But there are, and you're reporting here, places all over the US, Michigan, Maine,
where things are in much earlier stages.
But I imagine there are probably a number of reasons
why people don't want a rocket launch pad
in their backyard, so to speak.
Yeah, definitely.
So places like Oklahoma that are inland
are going to need FAA clearance.
They're conducting additional studies
in order to be able to determine is it safe to launch over land. They need FAA clearance.
what would happen to nearby Cumberland Island. the Spaceport company and is trying to commercialize a kind of alternative concept, which is launching
rockets from boats in the ocean. And so his company has a old Navy vessel and they've launched
rockets from the Gulf of Mexico with clearance. They launched four in one day in 2023. And so
that's really just goes to show the various alternatives that people are trying to come
up with, the ways that they're thinking outside the box.
And just the fact that, you know, this traffic jam doesn't just have one solution.
I've been speaking to The Wall Street Journal's Roshan Fernandez.
Roshan, thanks so much for bringing us this story.
Thank you, Luke.
And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning.
Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina
Rocker and I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas.
We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.