Microsoft Letting Engineers Chinese work on the cloud programs of the Pentagon Sparks Survey

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the Pentagon “examined” a Cloud Computing program managed by Microsoft using foreign workers from China, which was criticized this week for potentially lacking adequate guarantees, which could provide easy access to CCP to classified data and defense systems.

A propupublica report published on Tuesday accused Microsoft of having enabled engineers based in China to help Pentagon Cloud systems With inadequate railings in order to expand its public procurement activities.

In response, Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Sent a letter to Hegseth Thursday asking for information and documents on the program, including a list of all entrepreneurs from the Ministry of Defense (DOD) who hire Chinese staff to provide maintenance or other services to DOD systems, a list of subcontractors who hire “Microsoft digital escorts” Identify the suscepts of suscepts of suscepts. The republican senator asked for answers to his questions by the end of the month.

“In light of recent and worrying reports on Microsoft using engineers in China to maintain DOD systems, I asked the defense secretary to examine the issue,” Cotton said in an article on X sharing his letter to Hegseth. “We must protect ourselves against all threats within the supply chain of our soldiers.”

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A cyber-examination committee mandated by President Biden published a scathing report on Microsoft on a hack in 2023. (Getty Images)

A few hours after Cotton’s X Post, HegSeth replied: “Spot on the senator”.

“Okay fully agree,” HegSeth said in his own x post responding to cotton. “Our team already examines this as soon as possible. Foreign engineers – from any country, including of course China – should never be allowed to maintain or access DOD systems.”

The Propublica report cited current and old employees and government entrepreneurs who worked on a cloud computing program deployed by Microsoft in 2016, which involved a “digital escort” framework. The program, intended to comply with contractual federal regulations, has used a “digital escort” chaperon system for global cybersecurity officials, such as those based in China, intended to create a security stamp so that they can work on agency computer systems. DOD directives require people who manage sensitive data be American citizens or permanent residents.

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According to sources that spoke to Propublica, including some who knew an intimate familiarity with the hiring process for the $ 18 per hour position, the digital escort, the technology employees being hired to make the supervision missing from the adequate technological expertise to prevent a Chinese employee thug from hacking the system or transmitting classified information to the CCP.

Sources have developed that escorts, often former soldiers, have been hired for their security authorizations more than their technical capacities and often lacked skills aimed at assessing the code used by engineers they supervised.

In China, people are governed by radical laws forcing government cooperation with data collection efforts.

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on Friday that the Pentagon “examined” the concerns that Microsoft exploited a program that works on classified defense systems with the help of Chinese IT engineers. (AP photo / Rick Rycroft; Philip Fong / AFP via Getty Images; Omar Havana / Getty Images)

“If Propublica’s report turns out to be true, Microsoft has created a national embarrassment that endangers our soldiers, sailors, aviators and marine. Lucci is the CEO and founder of State Armor Action, a conservative group with a mission to develop and adopt solutions at the level of the global security threats.

“Microsoft or any seller offering China access to Pentagon secrets on betrayal behavior and should be treated as such,” added Lucci.

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A Black Hawk army helicopter carrying land journalists to the Pentagon after a demonstration of future combat systems for army secretary Francis Harvey, staff chief of the army Peter Schoomaker and the media of Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. (Scott J. Ferrell / Congressional Quarterly / Getty Images)

A Microsoft spokesperson Defends the company’s “digital escort” model on Tuesday, saying that all staff and entrepreneurs with privileged access must pass the checks of the history approved by the federal government.

“For certain technical requests, Microsoft initiates our team of experts in global matters to provide support through authorized American staff, in accordance with the requirements and processes of the US government,” added the spokesman. “In these cases, global support staff have no direct access to customer data or customer systems.”

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The Public Information Office of Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) was initially not aware of the program when Propublica began asking questions about it, but it finally followed to emphasize that “digital escorts” are used “in certain non -classified environments” in the Department of Defense for “Diagnosis and Advanced Problem Solving”.

Meanwhile, Friday, Microsoft’s communications director Frank Shaw said that in response to recent concerns about the program, Microsoft chooses to change certain changes.

“In response to the concerns raised earlier this week about foreign engineers supervised in the United States, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US government customers in order to ensure that no China-based engineering team provides technical assistance for the DOD government Cloud and related services,” Shaw said in a press release from Fox News Digital. “We remain determined to provide the most secure services possible to the American government, in particular by working with our national security partners to assess and adjust our security protocols if necessary.”