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Analysts have suggested it is "just matter of time" until the US ban on TikTok spreads to allied countries
and beyond - as long as the Trump administration presses ahead with it.
The app will be banned in America from Sunday after US lawmakers ruled it was a national security risk
because of owner ByteDance's ties to the Chinese government - ties it denies.
Incoming President Trump has indicated though that he is opposed to the ban and will find a way to reverse
it.
If the US ban goes ahead, experts point to the previous ousting of Chinese and Russian tech companies on
national security grounds as a potential blueprint for how the TikTok ban might spread around the world.
"There are big parallels between TikTok and what happened with China's Huawei and Russia's Kaspersky that
indicates it's just a matter of time until a creeping ban takes affect," says Emily Taylor, Editor of the
Cyber Policy Journal.
In both cases these companies were accused by the US of being a threat to national security - but no smoking
gun was ever revealed by cyber security authorities.
The same has happened with TikTok.
Under President Trump, Kaspersky's flagship antivirus software product was banned from civil and military
computers in the US after accusations arose in 2017 that it was used by the Kremlin in a hacking incident
that was never proven.
The UK followed almost immediately and one by one other allies fell into line with restrictions, warnings or
bans.
It took years but eventually a countrywide ban took effect last year in the US but it was all but redundant
by then. Kaspersky closed its US operations followed by its UK offices saying there is no viable business
there.
The company has always argued that the US government based its decision on the "geopolitical climate and
theoretical concerns" rather than independently verifying risk.
According to research from Bitsight Kaspersky's decline in usage after the ban was pronounced, not just in
the US but in at least 25 other countries too, even those with no overt public policy to ban the software.
