Microsoft announced on Friday that its China-based engineers can no longer provide technical support to the US military and other defence clients using the company's cloud services.
Frank Shaw, Microsoft's Chief Communications Officer, wrote on X, "In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services."
The issue came into the spotlight after a report by ProPublica detailed how Microsoft's Azure engineers in China are providing technical support to the US defense clients. Microsoft had apparently told ProPublica that its engineers and contractors complied with US government laws.
These China-based engineers are reportedly supervised through so-called "digital escorts" in the US, who are allegedly less technically qualified than the engineers and can not determine whether the Chinese engineers under their supervision pose a cyber threat to the United States.
On Friday, Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, demanding explanations about how these "digital escorts" are trained to detect threats, as well as the list of contractors that use Chinese personnel. "The US government recognizes that China's cyber capabilities pose one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by infiltration of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and supply chains," Cotton wrote.
In a video posted on X, Hegseth said this is "obviously unacceptable" and that he's issuing a two-week review of Pentagon cloud deals to ensure that "China will no longer have any involvement whatsoever in our cloud services, effective immediately." The US Defense Secretary also said the current controversy is due to "A legacy system created over a decade ago, during the Obama administration."
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle jointly received a $9 billion Department of Defense cloud services contract in 2022.
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