Pentagon terminates use of China-based engineers to support cloud systems

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon has ended a Microsoft program that allowed Chinese engineers to maintain the department’s sensitive cloud systems, and that it expects all DOD contractors to do the same.

The decade-old IT servicing model was brought to light in July following a ProPublica investigation, which found that Microsoft was using U.S.-based “digital escorts” that would take direction on how to fix issues with the Defense Department’s cloud systems from experts based overseas. While the digital escorts had necessary security clearances to work on the Pentagon’s networks, foreign engineers — many of which were based in China — did not.

Many of the digital escorts didn’t have the technical expertise to prevent Chinese engineers from inserting malicious code into the Pentagon’s classified networks, according to the report. As a result, Microsoft’s program could have unwittingly exposed the DOD to cybersecurity risks, Hegseth said in a video posted on X.

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