- US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls for investigation into Microsoft’s ‘digital escort’ system
- The system saw Chinese nationals coding for DoD software vendors
- Reports called this scheme ‘inherently risky’
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a review of the involvement of Chinese nationals in managing cloud services for the Pentagon and wider US military.
“For nearly a decade, Microsoft has used Chinese coders, remotely supervised by US contractors to support sensitive Department of Defense cloud systems – and if you’re thinking America First and common sense, this doesn’t pass either of those tests,” Hesgeth said.
The declaration comes after a ProPublica report claimed Microsoft’s use of Chinese engineers to maintain Department of Defense computer systems with ‘minimal supervision by US personnel’ was ‘inherently risky’ – but Microsoft has said it will soon stop using these China based-engineers for US military tech support.
Digital escorts
These workers were supervised by ‘digital escorts’ – who were found to be mainly low-skilled and low-paid workers with very little coding experience.
One such escort told ProPublica; ‘we’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell.’
“The use of Chinese nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments, it’s over,” Hegseth went on. “We’re requiring a third-party audit of Microsoft’s digital escort program, including the code and the submissions by Chinese nationals.”
Not only that, but Hegseth will also require the Department of Defense to carry out a separate investigation of the digital escort program and the Chinese Microsoft employees involved.
“The program was designed to comply with contracting rules, but it exposed the department to unacceptable risk,” he argued.
“These investigations will help us determine the impact of this digital escort workaround. Did they put anything in the code that we don’t know about? We’re going to find out.”
Going forward, all software vendors for the DoD will also have to identify and terminate any Chinese involvement in DoD systems.
“It blows my mind that I’m even saying these things, that we allowed it to happen – that’s why we’re attacking it so hard,” Hegseth said.
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