- The American defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, calls for investigation of Microsoft’s “digital escort” system
- The system has seen Chinese nationals code for DOD software providers
- Reports call for this “intrinsically risky” diet
The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, ordered an examination of the participation of Chinese nationals in the management of the Cloud services for the Pentagon and the wider American army.
“For almost a decade, Microsoft used Chinese coders, supervised remotely by American entrepreneurs to support sensitive cloud systems from the Ministry of Defense – and if you think that Amérique and common sense, that does not pass any of these tests,” said Hesgeth.
The declaration comes after a Propuplica The report said that Microsoft’s use of Chinese engineers to maintain the IT systems from the Ministry of Defense with a minimum supervision by US staff ” was “ intrinsically risky ” – but Microsoft said it would soon stop using these engines based on China for American military technological support.
Digital escorts
These workers were supervised by “digital escorts” – who have mainly proved to be low -skilled and little paid workers with very little coding experience.
Such an escort told Propuplica; “We hope that what they are doing is not malicious, but we really can’t say it.”
“The use of Chinese nationals for the cloud of the defense service is over,” said Hegseth. “We demand a third -party audit of Microsoft’s digital escort program, including code and submissions by Chinese nationals.”
Not only that, but Hegseth will also demand that the Ministry of Defense will put a separate investigation into the digital escort program and Microsoft Chinese employees involved.
“The program was designed to comply with the contracting rules, but it has exposed the ministry to unacceptable risks,” he said.
“These surveys will help us determine the impact of this digital bypass solution. Have they put something in the code we don’t know? We will discover it. “
In the future, all DOD software providers will also have to identify and terminate any Chinese involvement in DOD systems.
“It blows me that I even say these things, that we have allowed it to happen – that is why we attacked it so hard,” said Hegseth.
