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.
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.
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