I took the article to be absolutely damning in its reckoning on the utility of Operation Texas, precisely because it proved that no amount of technical control would be a match for the human infrastructure that tied Tiktok to China.

Which I suppose is a different way of making the same point as you.

Haha, yah, I think we agree; Operation Texas does what it says on the tin (the data is stored in the USA! It can only be directly accessed from within the USA) but ultimately that doesn't matter at all, since Jim in Texas can just email it all to China.