Microsoft is overhauling its security practices, blocking its engineers in China from providing technical support for the U.S. military’s cloud services. The company announced the change just days after an explosive report from ProPublica exposed significant national security risks associated with the long-standing arrangement.
The ProPublica report detailed how the U.S. Department of Defense relied on Microsoft software engineers in China for its Azure cloud platform. While American “digital escorts” supervised this work, the report noted these supervisors often had less technical expertise than the engineers they were managing overseas. This created a potential backdoor, leaving sensitive US defense systems vulnerable to a cyberattack from China.
The reaction was swift. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the arrangement “obviously unacceptable” and described it as a “legacy system” created over a decade ago. In a post on X, Microsoft’s Chief Communications Officer, Frank Shaw, confirmed the new policy, stating that “no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance” for these specific government cloud services.
This was a sharp reversal from the company’s initial statement to ProPublica, where it had insisted it was following all government rules. The stakes are high for Microsoft. Its Azure cloud division is a massive revenue generator for the company, and government contracts are a substantial part of that business.
In 2022, the Pentagon awarded cloud contracts worth up to $9 billion to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle. Protecting these valuable and highly sensitive contracts is critical for the company, prompting this immediate and decisive action to address the security concerns.
