The rise of the most effective attention-algorithm ever invented, and the superpower struggle to control it.

TikTok boasts 1.6 billion active users worldwide and wields unprecedented power over culture, politics, and commerce, making its addictive algorithm the greatest prize in America's technological cold war with China.

In Every Screen on the Planet, Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative journalist Emily Baker-White charts TikTok's rise from the Chinese founders' ambitions to its emergence as the world's most valuable startup?and a potential surveillance and propaganda tool for strongmen?to the dramatic events surrounding its ban and tenuous resurrection in January 2025. Based on explosive reporting that caused TikTok to track the author and led to an ongoing criminal investigation, Baker-White's engrossing narrative takes us inside the struggle as hawks in Congress push the company to the brink while the US government seeks backdoor access to observe and influence TikTok's data stream. Touching on politics, finance, business, and technology, she explains how the war for TikTok will either create a blueprint for autocrats to warp our information landscape or close the open internet as we know it.