If you’d heard of former Google designer Sarah Cooper at the start of 2020, it was probably because you were familiar with an old mega-viral post she wrote, titled 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings.

Cooper had quit her job to pursue a full-time career in online comedy, and was ticking along with YouTube subscriber numbers in the low six figures. Then, this year, she discovered two things. The first was TikTok, and the second was a style of parodying Donald Trump by miming his words.

The videos have made her a household name in the US and brought her fame around the world – but they may also have put her near the centre of an escalating trade and data conflict between superpowers, a US-China dispute that could change how the internet itself operates.

As she mimes Trump’s words in her latest video: “We may be banning TikTok, we may be doing some other things, there are a couple of options.”

For most people over the age of 30, if they have heard of it at all, TikTok is vaguely known as a social network full of dancing teens, and that it’s owned by a Chinese company. Yet this apparently innocuous app has become the centre of new executive actions by Trump’s administration, giving it just 45 days to secure a buyer for its US business before a ban comes into place.

The legality of Trump’s order is questionable, but among the US political elite it has become a given that TikTok must be part of some kind of Chinese soft power or intelligence operation. Rumours swirl about its capabilities to harvest data, with Amazon briefly banning employees from using TikTok before hastily U-turning less than 24 hours later. Even retired MI6 bosses have been warning against the app.