I don't even think you need to cook up possibilities as complicated as "psyop."
It is an absolute firehose of data on users and in aggregate, that is incredibly powerful. "Oh look, more people than usual have been working in office building 12 at Lockheed Martin this week" etc.
There's so many ideas about what TikTok's purpose is. By "psyop" I mean, if the purpose of TikTok is to influence the general mindset of the American populaton, then they'd throw a big tantrum and rile people up.
As you say, another possible purpose is that TikTok is used as a source of data and intel. I suppose it is a fine source for that, but also, if that's all China really wants, they can probably just buy most of that data on the shadowy data markets. The US Government shows no signs of stopping our personal data from being sold.
It is an absolute firehose of data on users and in aggregate, that is incredibly powerful. "Oh look, more people than usual have been working in office building 12 at Lockheed Martin this week" etc.