&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Military cloud at risk? US Senator seeks answers from Pentagon over Microsoft-China link")
A US senator is asking the Pentagon for more information on Microsoft's purported use of Chinese engineers in keeping military cloud computing systems going, a copy of the letter obtained by new agency Reuters shows. US Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and chair of the chamber's intelligence committee and also a member of its armed services committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following an investigative reporting piece in ProPublica earlier this week.
The report explained Microsoft's employment of Chinese engineers to do work on US military computer systems overseen by US "digital escorts" employed by subcontractors with security clearances but often lacked the technical qualifications to determine if the work of the Chinese engineers was a threat to cybersecurity.
When contacted by Reuters regarding both the ProPublica story and US Senator Tom Cotton's letter, Microsoft refused to comment. The company, a major contractor to the US government and whose networks have been infiltrated by both Chinese and Russian hackers, informed ProPublica that it shared its practices with the US government as part of an authorisation process.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cotton asked the US military provide a list of all contractors who employ Chinese workers and information about how US "digital escorts" are trained to detect suspicious activity. "The U.S. 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 the letter. The U.S. military "must guard against all potential threats within its supply chain, including those from subcontractors."
