TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit against Montana in response to a recently passed state law that would ban the popular video service in the state.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, is intended to “prevent the state of Montana from unlawfully banning TikTok,” lawyers for the app’s parent company, Bytedance wrote.
“Montana’s ban abridges freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment, violates the U.S. Constitution in multiple other respects, and is preempted by federal law,” the attorneys said.
Last week, Montana became the first U.S. state to ban TikTok over allegations that the Chinese government can use the app for intelligence gathering operations. When the ban comes into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, Apple and Google’s app stores will not be legally allowed to offer TikTok to users in Montana, although it’s unclear how those companies will be able to implement the ban.
Montana governor Greg Gianforte described the ban as “important measure” intended to advance “our shared priority to protect Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance.”
TikTok disputes Montana’s allegations that the Chinese government “could access data about TikTok users, and that TikTok exposes minors to harmful online content,” the lawsuit said.
“Yet the State cites nothing to support these allegations, and the State’s bare speculation ignores the reality that Plaintiff has not shared, and would not share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government, and has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok users, including by storing all U.S. user data by default in the United States and by erecting safeguards to protect U.S. user data,” the attorneys added.
TikTok has been under fire from U.S. lawmakers over its alleged ties to the Chinese Government. Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, withstood tough questioning from politicians in March, and attempted to assuage their concerns by highlighting the company’s work with U.S. tech giant Oracle to develop infrastructure in Texas intended to store and process people’s data in the country.
With the lawsuit, TikTok hopes that the court finds Montana’s ban “unconstitutional and preempted by federal law.”
President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Intel and Nvidia amount to a “scattershot method of crony capitalism,” Walter Isaacson said Thursday.
“That state capitalism often evolves into crony capitalism, where you have favored companies and industries that pay tribute to the leader, and that is a recipe for not only disaster, but just sort of a corrupt sense of messiness,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The Tulane University professor, widely known for his recent Elon Musk biography, argued that this method won’t succeed in reviving American manufacturing.
Isaacson’s comments come as the Trump administration wades further into influencing the way companies operate in the U.S.
The White House is pushing for a stake in embattled chipmaker Intel after Trump called CEO Lip-Bu Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and said he should resign.
Earlier this month, both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their China revenues to the U.S. government for export licenses to sell certain chips there.
Isaacson said he’s always been “dubious” of public-private partnerships. He highlighted Trump’s push for Coca-Cola to use cane sugar in its namesake soda as another example of “crony capitalism.”
A person holds Google Pixel 10 Pro mobile phones during the ‘Made by Google’ event, organized to introduce the latest additions to Google’s Pixel portfolio of devices, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., August 20, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
While Google made a big splash with its Pixel 10 series of smartphones, it was the software features that were strategically important for the tech giant’s bid to compete with players like OpenAI and Perplexity in consumer AI.
As it introduced its latest devices on Wednesday, Alphabet-owned Google showed off a slew of artificial intelligence features that are powered by the firm’s Gemini AI models. “Magic Cue,” for example, can scour various apps for information and deliver it to users when required. “Camera Coach” can give users tips on how to adjust framing and other aspects of a picture for the perfect shot. Live translation for phone calls is also available.
All of this gives a glimpse into the so-called “agentic AI” future that tech giants are hoping to reach, where super-smart AI assistants can carry out complex tasks.
It is a pivotal time for Google to come up with answers, as fears mount that users and revenue from its core search product could be eroded as more people turn to rivals like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Before Google lies a unique opportunity — the company develops Android, the operating system that is installed across more than three billion devices globally, many of which are smartphones.
“The company is leapfrogging rivals like OpenAI and DeepSeek by leveraging its access to billions of Android users, enabling a more effective distribution, integration, and a wider range of use cases for Gemini at scale,” Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said the smartphone is the “most pervasive consumer device on the planet” and that Google now has an “opportunity to get people hooked on Gemini.”
Google doesn’t need to sell a high volume of Pixel phones to find AI success with consumers. In fact, Pixel had just a 0.3% share of the global smartphone market in the first half of the year, compared to 23% for Samsung and 11.8% for Apple, according to the International Data Corporation.
But Google’s aim with its smartphones is to show off the best that Android has to offer in terms of software and AI. At that point, Android licensers, which include the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, may adopt some of those features on their new handsets.
This cycle would in turn spread Google’s Gemini and AI tools to more users.
“This massive user base creates a “flywheel effect” of adoption, usage, and feedback, further solidifying Gemini’s position as a master agent on the most widely used device on the planet—the smartphone,” Shah said.
The timing is also advantageous because of struggles at rival Apple. The Cupertino giant’s lack of AI strategy has concerned investors, with the iPhone showing very few features compared to Google’s offerings.
“Google has their tails up because Apple has dropped the ball. When Apple gets AI right it will be a fantastic experience. But right now, Google and all Android licensees have a window of opportunity,” Wood said.
Yet while there is now a land grab for users between major AI players, questions still linger over how Google will eventually monetize its AI services.
The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge from campaigners over its decision to override a local authority and wave through development of a new “hyperscale” data center.
Last year, the local authority of Buckinghamshire, England, denied planning permission for proposals to build a new 90-megawatt data center on green belt land. The green belt is a term in British town planning that refers to an area of open land on which building is restricted.
Data centers, large facilities that house floods of computing systems to enable remote delivery of various IT services, have seen huge demand in recent years amid a global rush to develop powerful new AI systems, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.
At the same time, they have been met with concerns from environmental campaigners and activists due to the vast amounts of power they require to keep them running on an ongoing basis. AI, in particular, has been criticized for consuming massive amounts of energy.
Plans to develop the Buckinghamshire facility were twice rejected by the council previously. However, they were again resurrected under the Labour government, which is pushing to make the U.K. a global artificial intelligence hub by ramping up national computing capacity.
Buckinghamshire council again rejected the planned data center in June 2024, saying it would be “inappropriate” to develop it on the green belt. Then, last month, British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner granted planning permission for the project, overturning the local authority’s decision.
Campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan announced on Thursday that they filed a formal planning statutory review asking a court to quash Rayner’s approval of the data center, raising concerns over the vast amounts of power and water such facilities require.
“Angela Rayner appears to either not know the difference between a power station that actually produces energy and a substation that just links you to the grid — or simply not care,” Foxglove Co-executive Director Rosa Curling, said in a statement Thursday.
“Either way, thanks to her decision, local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with a power guzzling-behemoth to keep the lights on, which as we’ve seen in the States, usually means sky-high prices.”
The U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — which Rayner also leads — declined to comment on the legal action when asked about it by CNBC. The government has previously stressed the importance of building data center infrastructure to compete on a global level in AI development.
Thursday’s move comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January announced plans to block campaigners from making repeated legal challenges from so-called “Nimbys” to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects in England and Wales.
Nimby is a derogatory term that refers to people who protest developments they view as unpleasant or hazardous to their local area.