Pete Hegseth orders review after revelations Microsoft used Chinese contractors to manage sensitive cloud services.<\/p>\n
Published On 28 Aug 202528 Aug 2025<\/p>\n
The United States has launched a review of Chinese nationals\u2019 involvement in managing sensitive cloud services for the US military, Washington\u2019s defence chief has said.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that he had ordered an audit of Microsoft\u2019s use of Chinese citizens to help manage sensitive cloud services to determine if any security breaches had occurred.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of Chinese nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments \u2013 it\u2019s over,\u201d Hegseth said in a video statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve issued a formal letter of concern to Microsoft documenting this breach of trust, and we\u2019re requiring a third-party audit of Microsoft\u2019s digital escort programme, including the code and the submissions by Chinese nationals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid they put anything in the code that we didn\u2019t know about? We are going to find out,\u201d Hegseth added.<\/p>\n
Hegseth said he had also directed software providers to identify and end \u201cany Chinese involvement in DOD systems\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hegseth\u2019s order comes after an investigative report by ProPublica in July documented Microsoft\u2019s employment of contractors in China and other foreign countries to maintain the Defense Department\u2019s cloud systems in conjunction with US-based \u201cdigital escorts\u201d.<\/p>\n
Following the report, Microsoft announced that it would no longer use China-based technicians to support the military.<\/p>\n
Hegseth, who announced an immediate review of China\u2019s involvement in cloud services following the ProPublica report, said excluding Chinese nationals from sensitive systems was \u201ccommon sense\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect vendors doing business with the Department of Defense to protect US national security ahead of profit maximisation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pete Hegseth orders review after revelations Microsoft used Chinese contractors to manage sensitive cloud services. Published On 28…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[2597,12,53,49,978,286,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-380153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-military","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-us-canada","14":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115106072827176603","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}