- Chinese engineers have apparently worked on sensitive DOD systems
- Microsoft has since stopped this practice
- Many in the department do not know the system
Some of the most sensitive data that the United States has to offer is currently maintained by engineers from China, often considered, in particular in the field of technology, its greatest opponent.
A report of Propuplica Said Microsoft uses these engineers to maintain IT systems from the Defense Ministry, with a “minimum supervision by American staff”.
This arrangement has changed from now on, says Microsoft, because the company has revised its practices to ensure that Chinese engineers no longer provide technical support to services in order to mitigate the risk of national security.
Digital escorts
“In response to the concerns raised earlier this week about US supervised foreign engineers, 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,” said Microsoft communications director, Frank Shaw, in an X Post.
Workers were supervised by “digital escorts”, barely minimum wage workers who are often less qualified than engineers they supervise – many are former soldiers with very little coding experience.
One of these escorts was told Propuplica; “We hope that what they are doing is not malicious, but we really can’t say it.”
While this system has been in place for almost ten years, many former representatives of the government have told the publication that they did not know the practice.
“Literally, no one seems to know more, so I don’t know where to go from here,” said Deven King, spokesperson for Defense Information Systems Agency.
The current technological and commercial war has seen the two states introduce strict regulations and national security policies, restricting access to markets and opportunities on both sides. Chinese pirates have even targeted local American governments in malware campaigns, highlighting the risk of security posed by the actors sponsored by the State.
