TikTok is at the heart of a wild geopolitical dogfight which means Microsoft might buy it. Here's what's going on.

For context, TikTok is wildly popular and hit 2 billion downloads in April.

TikTok has 200 million users in the US, but its Chinese roots have made US lawmakers uneasy.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in late 2019 contacted ByteDance expressing concerns that TikTok posed a threat to US citizens.

In December 2019, the US Army banned personnel from using TikTok. The Navy also told personnel not to install the app on government devices.

The US started signaling in early July that it might ban the TikTok app outright.

When asked by Fox News about a potential ban on July 6, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "We are taking this very seriously and we are certainly looking at it."

He added that US TikTok users should be wary of the app, saying their data could end up "in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party."

In an interview broadcast the following day, Trump said he was considering banning the app.

Amid these political rumblings, news emerged Friday that Microsoft might buy parts of TikTok.

The New York Times first reported TikTok was in talks to sell its US business to Microsoft and other US companies because Trump was considering taking action against the company.

According to the Times' sources, the governmental Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) ordered TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest the company on national security grounds.

The same day, President Trump told reporters on Air Force One he would ban TikTok in the US within 24 hours.

TikTok's US office said on Saturday saying it wasn't going anywhere.

On Sunday, Mike Pompeo said the administration would be taking action against TikTok within days.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Microsoft had put its acquisition talks on hold due to these confusing signals from the government.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal said the talks between Microsoft and ByteDance hit a speed bump following Trump's comments on Air Force One. One source said the comments caught both TikTok and Microsoft completely by surprise, while another said the Trump administration had been intimately involved in discussions between the two companies for weeks.

Microsoft publicly announced on Sunday it was resuming talks to buy parts of TikTok after its CEO spoke personally with Donald Trump.

It isn't clear what a new Microsoft-owned TikTok would look like, but early indications suggest it's about who owns the data

Microsoft's announcement doesn't explicitly state what a new, Microsoft-owned TikTok across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand might look like. The idea of another hived-off TikTok app that operates only in these markets under Microsoft seems drastic.

One part of the announcement suggests a deal would focus on who owns the data of TikTok users in these markets and where it's stored. As Microsoft wrote: "This new structure would build on the experience TikTok users currently love, while adding world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections. The operating model for the service would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversight by governments in these countries."

But it isn't clear how this might impact TikTok in other major markets such as, for example, Europe.

It emerged that Microsoft and TikTok now have 45 days to conclude their talks.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft isn't the only company in the running to buy TikTok.

US officials have had talks with at least one other large company apart from Microsoft about potentially acquiring TikTok, a source familiar with the talks told Bloomberg. The source did not say which large company this was.

It's also still possible that rather than sell TikTok, ByteDance might spin the company off entirely.

Analysts told Business Insider the potential acquisition was unexpected from Microsoft, but it could be a smart move for the company to break into the social media market.

Microsoft's interest in TikTok was seen by analysts as a departure from its typically enterprise-based business model.

"It's a little bit out of left field, but for Microsoft, the one area where they missed the boat was social media," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider.

Futurum Research analyst Daniel Newman said an acquisition could position Microsoft as a savior for TikTok's predominantly young user base. "The rising generations are very attached to this platform [...] Microsoft has the opportunity to be the hero here," Newman said.