Hegseth Pulls Plug on Chinese Involvement in Pentagon Cloud Operations
Focus is on “digital escort” system that is an Obama-Biden era legacy.
Last month, ProPublica published the findings on an investigation that exposed Microsoft’s “digital escort” system. Their analysis revealed that U.S. personnel with security clearances were supervising foreign engineers, including those in China.
As this was an Obama-Biden era legacy program, it will likely not surprise Legal Insurrection readers that these “escorts” often lacked the expertise needed to supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills effectively.
Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.
“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.
The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.
Microsoft told ProPublica that it has disclosed details about the escort model to the federal government. But former government officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. The program appears to be so low-profile that even the Defense Department’s IT agency had difficulty finding someone familiar with it. “Literally no one seems to know anything about this, so I don’t know where to go from here,” said Deven King, spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency.
After these revelations, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced an immediate internal audit of Microsoft’s digital cloud systems.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said the Pentagon has issued a formal letter of concern after learning that Microsoft was using Chinese nationals to service Pentagon cloud environments, which he described as “a breach of trust.”
“We’re requiring a third-party audit of Microsoft’s digital escorts program, including the code and the submissions by Chinese nationals,” Hegseth said in a video posted on X.
The use of Chinese Nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments is over. pic.twitter.com/jZdcHwKho2
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) August 27, 2025
He also terminated the Chinese involvement in the Pentagon cloud database.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has severed Chinese contractors’ access to Pentagon cloud data systems under a Microsoft project while ordering a wider inquiry into the system, the Secretary announced Wednesday.
“The use of Chinese nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments: It’s over,” Hegseth said in a video announcement of the change.
The Pentagon will no longer permit Chinese nationals to work on Defense Department cloud servers, he explained. Hegseth also ordered a third-party audit of Microsoft’s ‘digital escorts’ program, which employed the engineers, along with an internal investigation.
Hegseth’s announcement also noted that Department of Defense experts will conduct a separate investigation into the digital escort program and the Chinese Microsoft employees involved in it.
These investigations will help us determine the impact of this digital escort workaround. Did they put anything in the code that we didn’t know about? We’re going to find out.
Additionally, all Department of Defense software vendors will identify and terminate any Chinese involvement in DoD systems. It blows my mind that I’m even saying these things. It’s such common sense that we ever allowed it to happen. Uh that’s why we’re attacking it so hard.
We expect vendors doing business with the Department of Defense to put US national security ahead of profit maximization. I’m committed, like the president is, to ensuring that our national security networks are secure. Again, it’s America first and it’s common sense. This never should have happened in the first place, but once we found out about it, we’ve attacked it aggressively from the beginning and we’re going to follow all the way through the tape to make sure that this is addressed.
I hope the investigative teams dig deeply into this program, as we continue to dig out from the disaster of the Obama-Biden presidencies.
Hopefully, its not too little too late. https://t.co/i4dWzTTCI9
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) September 1, 2025
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Comments
escorts name?
fang fang
Um, no. The escorts were American.
Technically, but I wouldn’t trust them with anything. Everyone involved should see serious espionage charges.
Why? What did the American escorts do wrong? The blame should go on whoever at DoD authorized this, but they can’t seem to find who that was.
It was a JOKE.
Sometimes in his rush to prove how superior he is, he totally misses it.
How did you miss this was a joke Justice Milhouse 🤣🤣
What?! An American can’t be named Fang Fang?!
Soupy Sales had White fang.
Phyllis Diller had Fang.
so looking ahead whats it going to take to keep this maga agenda in full throttle?
who will be the keeper of the maga flame and torch the anti american pro- omar agenda?
are any of the current maga as tough as djt ( and even he has had some failures) as china builds up its arsenal to dominate
Kind of nice having a patriot as Defense Secretary
My last company outsourced to China and Russia. I always thought that was stupid. They’re generally less skilled and even if they didn’t insert anything they could easily steal the technology and probably did.
Is there an elected Democrat anywhere that isn’t some level a traitor?
Can Bill Gates be held accountable? Remember, attitude starts top down.
No, because Gates isn’t in operational charge of Microsoft.
But those who are now should definitely be held responsible.
From June of 2024: Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian Hack, Whistleblower Says
I knew this arrangement was treason the first time I heard of it, which is when Biden was still around. Don’t remember where I heard it, though it wasn’t from here or any of the “daily” sources I consume.
Anyone remember the scandal about 18-20 or so years ago when the Chinese were buying all the DoD’s used photocopiers? At first no one knew why they were doing it. Then someone figured out that the copiers contained hard drives that recorded everything that was being copied.
Wanna guess where the copiers were being made?
Accountable for what? He did nothing wrong. DoD approved this stupid program.
The person who approved it should be charged with treason.
Charged with something, anyway. I doubt it was treason. I doubt whoever it was was motivated by support for the PRC’s cause. Though if that person is ever identified it should certainly be looked into as a possibility.
Simply unbelievable, the level of likely infiltration by Iranian and Chinese spies/operatives into federal government contracting and systems, under the naive, gullible and stupid Obama and Biden regimes. Malignant foreign actors know precisely how to exploit the vile and stupid Dhimmi-crats’ “diversity” dogmas.
Recall those Iranian computer “consultants” or contractors, hired by the DNC or some Dhimmi-crat apparatchik’s office, who were discovered engaged in computer malfeasance? The story quickly disappeared from view.
Pakistanis, not Iranians. They were caught stealing, not spying. But there’s no telling what else they were doing, and they had insane access. And it was covered up and they were allowed to run back home to Pakistan. Not the finest moment in US intelligence.
Thanks for the factual correction, as to nationality.
IIRC, wasn’t it Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s office?
Yup. I’m not positive on the timeline, but I believe that when the scandal actually broke, she was chairman of the DNC. And they’re still electing her to stuff down in Florida.
The absolute magnitude of the security hole this represents is hard to understand. Practically *every* US Government agency uses the Microsoft cloud to store unclassified material. It makes the Chinese breaking into the Office of Personnel Management look like peanuts by comparison. Then tie in every major corporation, every municipality, every state driver’s license bureau… It’s not a matter of if the cloud security is breached, it’s *when* and by *who*
Cripes. I won’t even store my family calendar or email on the damn cloud. I rent a private server just to avoid it.
Everybody involved in this scheme should be charged with treason.
I doubt anyone involved was motivated by support for the PRC and a wish to assist it against the USA. Which is what a treason charge requires.
And most of those involved did nothing wrong. They were innocently doing their jobs, as approved by DoD. Whoever approved it, if he is ever identified, should be charged with as much as he can be. I doubt treason would be available even for him, but it should be looked into.
I suspect that the most important qualification for digital escorts is how many pronouns they claimed.
Um, no.
This “program” was like driving a pickup to the local Home Depot at 5 AM and calling out, “Necesito cinco guías de almacén para una semana.” Then your actual elite team goes in and rapes the warehouse while these untrained clodwallopers don’t even notice anything wrong.
They headhunted these jobs. Don’t bother following the links, they’re all erased now.
If not working a Chinese restaurant or jewelry/clothing store, every Chinese needs kicked out of the country.
On September 4, 2020, the Department of Defense reaffirmed that Microsoft won the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud contract after the reevaluation of the proposal, stating that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government.
The JEDI contract with Microsoft was cancelled on July 6, 2021 with the expectation that a new program called “Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability” (JWCC) would replace it, which would involve services from multiple vendors. On November 19, 2021 the Department of Defense issued formal solicitations to four of the original JEDI companies: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle; notably not including the fifth provider consulted, IBM. On December 7, 2022, the JWCC contract was awarded to the four companies for a combined total of up to $9 billion under the program.
Anyone who has been involved in IT or software for more than 2 minutes knows that you can’t actually track everything someone does, especially if you’re responsible for more than 1 person.
This “Digital Escort” program sounds like a security fig leaf over an attempt to slash costs by outsourcing. It should never have been approved. Kudos to SecDef Hegseth for killing it.
But the cherry on top is that they outsourced it to CHINA.
That’s like exclusively using the local sex offender registry to shop for a babysitter.