The tech giant failed to include details about the China-based engineers in its 2025 security plan for the Pentagon.
Conservative activists are urging Congress to launch an investigation into Microsoft’s usage of China-based engineers to manage Pentagon servers and its apparent failure to disclose details about it in a security plan explaining how it will protect computer systems.
The activist push is based on ProPublica reporting on Microsoft’s employment of Chinese engineers to work on sensitive Pentagon systems and a follow-up story about Microsoft’s decision not to include details about the China-based engineers in its 2025 security plan for the Pentagon.
“Microsoft’s actions at the Pentagon — ranging from extreme carelessness to borderline treason — warrant a full and immediate investigation from Congress,” said Michael Lucci, founder and CEO of State Armor, a right-leaning watchdog specializing in Chinese Communist Party influence operations.
“If Microsoft is using China-based engineers to manage our nation’s most sensitive secrets and failing to disclose these facts to Defense Department officials, they are undermining national security and everything else they manage in the federal government must be scrutinized,” Lucci added.
The Pentagon already launched its own investigation into IT contractors’s use of foreign personnel after ProPublica‘s initial report on Microsoft’s reliance on foreign engineers to maintain its cloud systems. A congressional investigation could lead to high-profile hearings and greater scrutiny on Microsoft’s actions than a Pentagon probe, which will likely be secretive with limited public disclosures.
“Microsoft’s deception reveals a disgusting combination of corporate arrogance and cold disregard for America’s national security,” said Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, a consumer advocacy group.
“Choosing to hire tech engineers based in China is shockingly dangerous enough; choosing to conceal such operations from the Defense Department should lead to an immediate review of every government contract with Microsoft, whether with the Department of Defense or elsewhere.”
Putting Chinese engineers on a sensitive Pentagon project could present an opportunity for espionage if the right security protocols are not in place.
Hacking is China’s preferred method of espionage and there have been over 100 publicly known cases of it in the past ten years, according to a tracker maintained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan foreign policy think tank.
Since 2021, there has been more than 60 documented cases of Chinese espionage across 2o states, including the transmission of sensitive military information, the House Homeland Security Committee said earlier this year.
A recent high-profile case involved a Chinese state-sponsored hacker who allegedly targeted U.S. universities, immunologists, and virologists conducting research on the Covid-19 vaccine in early 2020. The hacker is thought to have exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s exchange server, a product that was the target of a prolific worldwide hacking campaign. He was arrested in Italy in July at the request of the U.S. alongside another defendant.
The Trump administration has attempted to combat Chinese espionage through aggressive law enforcement and increased scrutiny on Chinese students seeking visas to study at U.S. universities.
Chinese influence over American universities and their ability to leverage that influence into research partnerships has helped China develop its critical military technologies, sometimes with assistance from U.S. taxpayers.