WSJ What’s News - Beijing Discusses TikTok Sale to Musk

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

A.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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Three, two, one. What will the world look like 10 or 20 years from now? The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a peek. And we can't wait to show you what's coming. Subscribe now. 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.
Starting point is 00:00:45 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.
Starting point is 00:01:32 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
Starting point is 00:02:16 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
Starting point is 00:02:55 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.
Starting point is 00:03:26 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
Starting point is 00:04:06 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
Starting point is 00:04:33 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
Starting point is 00:05:21 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
Starting point is 00:05:52 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
Starting point is 00:06:34 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.
Starting point is 00:07:13 What then will the future reveal? There's one thing we know about the future. It's being built now. We all have a stake in the future. The future. The future. The future. And the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a glimpse of what's on the way. I'm Danny Lewis. Join us as we dig into how science and technology are shaping 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
Starting point is 00:08:02 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.
Starting point is 00:08:29 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
Starting point is 00:08:55 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
Starting point is 00:09:37 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
Starting point is 00:10:09 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.
Starting point is 00:10:42 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.
Starting point is 00:11:02 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.
Starting point is 00:12:11 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.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.