Despite not holding a senior position, Goziker claims that his main job at TikTok was âoverseeingâ Project Texas to ensure the social media appâs plan to secure US user data would be effective. The goal was to implement a set of safeguards that would satisfy the ââCommittee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency body charged with evaluating national security risks associated with foreign firms acquiring or taking major stakes in US companies. CFIUS has the power to force companies to unwind deals it considers risky, and since 2019 has been investigating ByteDanceâs 2017 purchase of a lip-syncing app called Musical.ly, which was later merged into TikTok.
Goziker claims that he interviewed more than three dozen people at TikTok and ByteDance about Project Texas, according to court filings. He says that he identified flaws in the…