WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews)— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday a full-scale investigation into Microsoft’s reported use of Chinese Communist Party-linked engineers to work on Pentagon and U.S. military cloud services.
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“It’s over,” Hegseth said at a briefing. “We’re requiring a third-party audit of Microsoft’s digital escort program, including the code and submissions by Chinese nationals. This audit will be free of charge for U.S. taxpayers.”
The probe comes after concerns that foreign engineers may have had access to sensitive U.S. defense infrastructure.
“Did they put anything in the code that we didn’t know about? We’re gonna find out,” Hegseth said.
The Pentagon has not released a timeline for the investigation, but officials say the audit will determine whether national security was compromised. Microsoft has not yet commented on the announcement.
Watch China further block Azure & Office365 cloud services as a response.
Security wise, MS is not a good fit. Best for US DoD to deploy open-source OS instances hosted across American data centers. TNO (trust no one) policy as much as possible. DoD invented the Internet with ARPANET for crying out loud.