TikTok announced on July 21 that it is planning to hire 10,000 staff in the US over the next three years regardless of the increasing Sino-US tensions. This year alone, the Chinese-owned social media app added nearly 1,000 employees in the US, tripling its headcount in the country. "These are good-paying jobs that will help us continue to build a fun and safe experience and protect our community's privacy," the company told CNBC.

TikTok has made considerable efforts to move its operations to the US. It has four offices across the country, and is reportedly considering locating its international headquarters at its largest global office in Los Angeles. In May, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, hired Disney's former head of streaming Kevin Mayer as TikTok's CEO. A June study by professional social network Blind found that TikTok and ByteDance have become very popular among tech sector professionals, including current employees from tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon—suggesting that it is fast rising in attractiveness as an employer.

However, the geopolitical risk for both the company and its employees is soaring. TikTok has come under fire multiple times in the last few months for data privacy issues, including claims that the app is collecting large amounts of personal data and transferring it to servers accessible by Chinese corporations. The US government is already moving to ban the use of TikTok on government-issued mobile phones, and may extend that to a nationwide ban. Australia is also considering banning the app, and in fact India has already done so. If the ban in the US does come to pass, it would almost certainly sink the company's hiring plans.