Senior Chinese officials have floated a sale of the social media app to the Tesla CEO and ally of president-elect Donald Trump if an appeal of an impending U.S. ban fails, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. (Bloomberg)

Talking point: Tick, tock indeed: a U.S. law that would ban TikTok on app stores and web hosting services will go into effect this week if owner ByteDance’s application to pause it until a court hears the appeal is unsuccessful. U.S. national security officials have been scrutinizing TikTok since the tech giant bought its predecessor Musical.ly in 2017, out of concern the Chinese government could influence the wildly popular platform and use it to conduct surveillance. Chinese officials hope Musk, who also owns rival platform X, would see value in TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users, Bloomberg reported, though it is unclear how a deal would be financed. Meanwhile, Trump is reportedly setting aside office space in a building adjacent to the White House for Musk’s government cost-cutting project.