The Tiktoka investment in Finland causes government warnings

The construction of the Tiktok Data Center in Finland can provide China with access to American microchips used in developing artificial intelligence, and thus threaten Finland's relations with the USA – said Economic Affairs Wille Rydman.

According to the head of the Ministry of Economy, a large investment, which is the construction of the Chinese Server Center of the Tiktok Social Platform, under which areas in South Finland have recently been purchased, raises concerns not only for the protection of user data, but also in connection with the possibility for China to acquire modern American integrated circuits.

The US administration has recently limited the export of the most modern NVIDIA processors to many countries of the world, including China and Russia, to make it difficult to develop Chinese technology for fear that Beijing could use them for military purposes. In turn, Finland is a ban on exports among the Americans and – as Minister Rydman emphasized on the YLE television program – is one of the “most trusted” US partners in the field of advanced technologies.

According to the Finnish politician, there is a risk that China “use data centers” in various countries, formally only rented by Tiktok, to access the latest chips. According to Minister Rydman, the construction of the Tiktok Data Center will bring Finland rather small benefits, but it can be “harmful to the strategic, industrial and research cooperation between Finland and the USA.”

As TV YLE informed, the construction of the Tiktok Data Processing Center in Finland “was kept secret” for over half a year, and the Finnish government learned about this investment only at the end of April after the first building permit and the purchase of land. Local government is a party to the transaction.

The facility in the city of Kouvola (approx. 130 km northeast of Helsinki) will be built by the Finnish Developer Przedsiębiorstwo Hyperco, and Tiktok, belonging to the Chinese company Bytedance, will be the main user as the tenant.

Earlier, the Finnish National Assembly (Eduskunta) and the Council of Ministers forbade the use of Tiktok on their employees' company devices.

pmo/ san/