- US Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth calls for the study of Microsoft’s ‘Digital Escort’ system
- The System Saw Chinese Citizens Code for Dod -SoftWar Suppliers
- Reports called this scheme ‘inherently risky’
US defense secretary Pete Hegeth has ordered a review of the involvement of Chinese citizens in the management of cloud services to the Pentagon and the wider US military.
“For almost a decade, Microsoft has used Chinese coders, externally monitored by US contractors to support the sensitive Department of Defense Cloud Systems – and if you think of America first and common sense, this does not pass any of these tests,” Hesgetth said.
The statement comes after one Propublica The report claimed that Microsoft’s use of Chinese engineers to maintain the Department of Defense Computer Systems with ‘Minimal Supervision by American Staff’ was ‘inherent risky’ – but Microsoft has said it will soon stop using these China -based constructors for US military technical support.
Digital escorts
These workers were monitored by ‘digital escorts’-which were found to be mainly low-skilled and low-paid workers with very little coding experience.
Such an escort told Propublica; “We trust that what they are doing is not malicious, but we really can’t tell.”
“The use of Chinese citizens for the Service Department for Defense Sky environments, it’s over,” Hegeth continued. “We demand a third -party revision of Microsoft’s digital escort program, including the code and submissions from Chinese citizens.”
Not only that, but Hegeth will also require the Department of Defense to perform a separate examination of the digital escort program and the Chinese Microsoft employees involved.
“The program was designed to comply with Contracting Rules, but the vulnerable department of unacceptable risk,” he argued.
“These studies will help us determine the impact of this digital escort solution. Have they put something into the code we don’t know about? We’ll find out.”
In the future, all software vendors for DOD will also identify and end any Chinese involvement in DOD systems.
“It blasts my mind that I even say these things that we let it happen – that’s why we attack it so hard,” Hegeth said.
