Public sentiment is predominantly negative regarding the changes in Microsoft's role in Pentagon contracts, particularly the decision to discontinue employing China-based engineers. Users express deep concerns over national security and skepticism about the capabilities of large tech firms to handle sensitive information securely. There are calls for the government to rely more on internal capabilities rather than outsourcing to private companies. Many commenters feel betrayed by both Microsoft and the government for prioritizing profits over security.

Microsoft

U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Government

DependentBest1534

Anything to not have Americans do the work. 

Do the old people just completely hate us? They would rather go on another vacation then employ people here.

VhickyParm

When you store everything on someone else’s computer you don’t really have a say what they do with it even when you think you do.

Wubwom

“‘We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,’ said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.” 

What in the—and I say this as articulately as my knee-jerk reaction allows—absolute EFF!!!

RoyaltyN188

What could possibly go wrong? :insert sarcasm:

If it wasn't clear to you before, it should be crystal clear to you now. There are u.s. citizens (and naturalized traitors), judges, a long list of elected officials, and u.s. based companies plotting and conspiring every minute of every hour to undermine and destroy the united states from the inside. 

We all need to ask ourselves....are you helping them to destroy this country by continuing to consume their products, continuing to vote for people in a political party where EVERYONE is onboard with the conspiracy, or supporting the conspiracy by not voting at all?

Adventurous_Emu_832

It's crazy that domestic contractors/federal workers need a TS clearance to touch DoD systems, but Big Tech workers apparently don't, just an $18/hr chaperone that has no IT skills.  No wonder they've been able to undercut all of these domestic workers/contractors.

This says it all:  
"the officials raised the possibility of Microsoft “hiring a bunch of U.S. citizens to maintain the federal cloud” directly, Crowley told ProPublica. For Microsoft, the suggestion was a nonstarter, Crowley said, because the increased labor costs of implementing it broadly would make a cloud transition prohibitively expensive for the government."

Another words they would never have tricked the government into moving to the Cloud with their low cost pricing models if they had to compete fairly on wages.  They placed their profit margins above national security.  All it would take is a remote engineer feeding them some commands to disable DoD cloud assets during war, or just flat out exfiltrating data, assuming they haven't already.

Wise-Passion-4671

None of this is surprising. This country has national security jokes a mile wide

We are very due for a terrorist attack of some sort either foreign or domestic or both.

Avenger772

We’ve subbed out every inherently governmental function to people whose MO is profit.. it’s absolutely bananas how common this  practice is.

Jennim5588

There are reasons why europe wants to stand on it's own digital feet when microsoft does this sort of shit

Georg3251

As soon as lil' Leon got the orange toad "elected", the country has been for sale. National security no longer exists. 

KayNicola

I find the Azure cloud to be horrible compared to AWS. 

On topic.. WTF???

stillpixelstudios

deepstatediplomat

Don't worry! Grok is on the case now! 

/$

Spadrick

keyjan

So what’s next then? are they going to use H1Bs or offshore gov work?

createaccountbro

Cheech925

I will have to research this but if true this shit is crazy!!!!!! This is crazy because the Army is turning to Microsoft to help flatten their network and to handle the MDE security of the systems on that network

cyberfx1024

Outsourcing to save cost instead of giving US citizens a chance for work.

TaifmuRed

xsubo

If this is true, then Microsoft is in big trouble. And DOD broke their own rules.

Used to work for a government contractor. Any client documents had to be stored on servers in the US that could not be accessed by overseas personnel (separate system from commercial clients). We had a certified hosting facility run by cleared resources in the US. The teams working at DOD worked on site at the client using DOD equipment, leaving their employer issued laptops and phones at home. Nothing left DOD premises.

I think it was GAO (I’m not fully caffeinated yet and trying to recall) that would audit our company for compliance. Failure would result in massive fines and loss of billions in contracts. 

Blueporch

Hey DoD, your tech-bro billionaire friends only care about money!

No-Edge-8600

LULZ. Lots of people saw dollar signs not long-term safety or maybe it was a honey pot to get access the other way.  I lean toward someone who has made a lot of money from Chinese influence I mean investments. Kathy Hochul had a Chinese agent choosing who she met. It's been going on for a long time if you ask me.

jugo5

Man.  There is dumb and then there is DUMB.  I thought these idiots were supposed to be in charge of security.

ElephantContent8835

Sounds like the DOD gave up after China stole f22 f35 designs and served any additional intel up in a gold platter.

Chogo82

but then they say RTO is necessary for the small face to face interactions 


workers are hated so much in the US, it's been normalized to BS them constantly 

4BigData

https://preview.redd.it/7tec4xaqxtdf1.png?width=1442&amp;format=png&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=39b600a699d4cce83af2f3dd1a25f99484b788d5

GogOfEep

West_Kangaroo_3568

Doesn't surprise me.  When I worked there they outsourced a ton of sysadmin jobs to India.  Microsoft would outsource their CEO to China if they could save a buck.

General_Nose_691

This can't be right. This info is NOFORN no foreign dissemination.

DocHolidayiN

Tell me you don’t know what your talking g about without telling me

&gt; Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said.

wayfaast

It’s because the rich see Chinas system of governance as their wet dream. Cover EVERYTHING UP, surveillance everywhere, you can’t speak out, you have no rights as a citizen, etc etc. They HATE Americans and see them as self-righteous and stupid.

AzureWave313

bluelifesacrifice

Name me a more iconic duo than Microsoft and incompetence.

CyberSmith31337

Free market FTL, once again.

There are things that are too important to be left to the lowest bidder.

TheShittyBeatles

Literally what the fuck are they doing…. Corporate greed is so bad we’ll take inane risks to save Pennie’s. Cool cool cool. We’re fucked, everyone. Start learning mandarin and how to suck dick.

skeechmcgoober

Wow... that's smart! The most incompetent, amateur administration in history. One could be forgiven for thinking that they're deliberately weakening the US, just so they can concentrate power on the president's desk. Total control, total responsibility...which it will never accept.

Effective-Ebb-2805

It took a ProPublica report for them to realize that it's' a very, very, bad idea?

tabrizzi

Why the f@ck were they using them in the first place? Microsoft support is already so bad you’d think it was an opp.

DepartmentofLabor

For a layman, it seems like a bad idea to outsource those kind of operations to China to begin with

Space_Sweetness

oops, after careful consideration we are moving tech support to russia.

Double-Accident-7364

Now, they will use AI, which will give a made-up and false answer to every question.

compuwiza1

Microsoft can just revert to using A.I. (Actually Indians).

gr4ndp4

&gt;Microsoft (MSFT.O) ... on Friday said it will stop using China-based engineers to provide technical assistance to the U.S. military

A. Microsoft are assholes.

B. US military are dumbasses for not ever previously thinking about such massive fukking security threats could happen via the vendors they use. Some simple language in the contracting process could have avoided this.

sniffstink1

How many Chinese workers were involved? No number in Propublic article.

cutthemauvewire

Fucking dumbasses.

And that’s the most optimistic and generous take.

arcarus23

Danominator

It's not about China or Russia or the US. It's about all these techs are using every excuse they can to move the line to the f***ing India.

sfo24-1026-Xmas-7777

Phew, finally, they will use Indian Engineers 😮‍💨

iknewaguytwice

Been saying this for years.  Even if they do hire only Americans it isn't going to save them from state level fuckery though.  AWS and Microsoft are just way too big of a target for China not to have agents hired at key jobs within those companies.

twinsea

DirtyWetNoises

This was who’s idea? WOW…. You just can’t make this stuff up. I bet someone got a raise when they signed China up to assist the US with tech support. 
Dip dip dip $h!|s

Historical_Duty_6984

motohaas

JustASheepInTheFlock

Worsebetter

Thank you Microshaft for doing one good thing in the last 10 years

TheGoldenCompany_

Just upload all your corporate data straight to the pentagon and save them the hassle.

qualia-assurance

macholusitano

Thats the reason why the city of cologne (I know it because I work there) manages its own IT infrastructure without the FBI having a backdoor to our data.

captain_GalaxyDE

Mistral powered translation for non-french speakers:

How can you guarantee with concrete evidence that the data of French public entities managed through UGAP contracts will never be transmitted, of course, under court order?

From a legal standpoint, we contractually commit to our clients, which include the public sector, to resist these requests when they are unfounded. We have a very rigorous system in place, initiated during the Obama administration, and we take legal action to obtain concessions from the U.S. government. The government cannot make requests that are not precisely defined with a narrow scope. This system works very well because for about 3 years, we have been publishing transparency reports twice a year. If you look at these reports, they indicate that for the past 3 years, there has been no request affecting a European company in this context.

To answer you on the technical aspect, similarly, in our contractual commitments, we encrypt data at rest, meaning when they are in Microsoft's data centers, and in transit when they move between different data centers using encryption keys. Similarly, we have a contractual commitment that these encryption keys are not given to any entity.

Allow me to ask a small follow-up question about the encryption keys. It has come to our attention that, reportedly, Microsoft, as part of the Prism program, communicated the Outlook encryption key to the NSA. Can you confirm these elements?

I am not trained on that, so I cannot answer you. Microsoft has legally committed against any inappropriate request for European data, which you have confirmed.   
  
In the case of a founded American injunction, are you required to provide the data?   
  
If the conclusion of all this process I described to you is that we are obliged to give them, we will give them.

PzumAsi

That’s hardly anything new. The CLOUD act from 2018 allows :

    U.S. law enforcement to compel U.S.-based tech companies to provide data stored on servers, regardless of the data’s physical location, including servers in Europe.

Use encryption in the cloud.

8fingerlouie

Probably coming from this complete French Senate hearing FYI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_psdHMc16cM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_psdHMc16cM)

(French National Assembly &amp; Senate - the two parliament chambers - often publish videos of their complete hearings:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/@Assemblee-nationale/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@Assemblee-nationale/videos)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/@senat/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@senat/videos)

It's a nice podcast &amp; from time to time your favorite theme appears so do have a look if you enjoy politics &amp; current affairs. It's often more interesting than your typical 5 min morning interview for a CEO or high ranking official : more in depth content, more surprising details, more TIL moments, less polished speech from the audited person etc)

EDIT: actually interested in your national equivalent if that exists, need to expand my EU political culture :)

EDIT2: audition --&gt; hearing

STOXX1001

The US government that hates Europe with a passion...

b__lumenkraft

Yep, so Trump (or his admin) gives the order they automatically cave and comply.

Tomlambro

HowHoward

I love that the US is everything they accused China of being.

iGleeson

EU alternatives for such cloud providers (Azure, AWS, etc) do not exist. At least not at this scale.

EU has fallen asleep and needs to get itself together, as currently widely adopted alternatives to US services do not exist, at least not for the majority of population and use cases.

The worst part of this is the mentality that “EU can do without tech behemoths or that we are better of without them”, which is one of the reason why we are in such mess in the first place.

ConfusedPhDLemur

That means that Microsoft's European data centers are not operating according to the GDPR.

Sassi7997

All American owned data centers fall under the same law and will have the same issue no matter where they are physically hosted.

justthegrimm

We are told to be vigilant about China but USA is the same with better PR. We need EU Sovereignty.

Expert_Average958

No surprises, in a post-Snowden world, the EU slept for too long.

RoomyRoots

Microsoft is a massive security risk, and the EU should be moving away from their products and services.

Protect-Their-Smiles

So much for "data sovereignty" when encryption keys can still be handed over under legal pressure. The transparency reports are nice, but they don't change the fact that the CLOUD Act gives the US government a skeleton key. At this point, self-hosting or EU-based providers seem like the only real way to avoid this backdoor access.

Huge_Resort441

 I am shocked, SHOCKED, to find that data exflitration is going in in here!

clericc--

To no one's surprise? They always required us companies to share Data regardless of where it is homed.

Anyways, there's no cloud it's just someone else's pc

RedditSucksIWantSync

umo2k

Microsoft, Amazon. If you're from EU your data is accessible by every US alphabet agency.

KralizecProphet

That's not what the video says: Microsoft might comply with a very well defined demand with a defined scope but the American government can't just access their datacenters. 

It is worrying though that there is a process in place through which they can make such a demand and that the US government can get their hands on data of European institutions and citizens. It's even more worrying that an American president can order Microsoft to lock accounts of ICC prosecutors..

Djennik

they never found a backdoor in Huawei, yet we all let ourselves pressure into bannint Huawei and replacing it with Cisco. Instead of maybe delivering to Bejing, we safely deliver to the US.

-SineNomine-

Nothing new (cloud act, fisa). But I believe this is the first time an official Microsoft representative has acknowledged this.

nous_serons_libre

Naso_di_gatto

Encryption of data requires an encryption key that is used by the server serving data to the user to decrypt that data. Someone has to store this key. By default it's the service provider that stores the key as it needs to operate the service. That's the default. As the lawyer says in the video, Microsoft can be forced to share the key with the government. That's a legal obligation Microsoft can not avoid.

However there is a solution: using your own key to encrypt your data (BYOK), that Microsoft does not know and can not access. Microsoft offers this option for its enterprise services, but of course it requires additional configuration and it's not available for consumer services.

European companies using Azure or other Microsoft cloud services can protect their sensitive data by correctly configuring the encryption. I assume the same is valid for other cloud providers, but I speak specifically for Microsoft cloud because it's what I know best and it's also the topic of the thread.

Of course consumer's services (Outlook, Onedrive etc.) do not support BYOK and you can not protect them from the US government. If you care about that, you can use services that encrypt your data with your password, like ProtonMail, but be mindful that **if you lose your password all your data is lost forever** as nobody can recover it because nobody else has a copy of your password.

Also remember that EU can do the same thing (example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation\_to\_Prevent\_and\_Combat\_Child\_Sexual\_Abuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Combat_Child_Sexual_Abuse) )

lars_rosenberg

Nothing new at all. Everybody who is able to read was able to know that for years.

I just wonder why so many companies keep dumping all their critical data into Azure.

Far_Note6719

lol, thanks for the french subtitles to french speakers...very helpful.

GenericName2025

….and this confirmation really does wonder someone ?

nor414

This is a requirement of the CLOUD Act, it's at odds with GDPR in many ways.    For Europeans that care about this, encrypt your data with your own keys that you control on the various clouds.

goobervision

sendmebirds

\*Uploads terrabytes of gay porn named US president assaination plan A-Z, US nuclear strike etap 1-100\*

![gif](giphy|FCgcgyDCc4ReE)

BluesyPompanno

Yeah no shit. It's simply theirs. They can have EULAs and TOS all they want, they are an American company and if the US government tells them you have to give us your data they will do it. The same applies to any other country really. If it's not on your computer, it's on someone else's computer, it's never not been the case.

amazing_asstronaut

Benouamatis

Seems like they are doing everything to make sure no corporation wants to put significant information in "the cloud "

EatAssIsGold

Datacenters in the US means the US government read your data.

Datacenters in the EU means the US government plus the local government read your data.

Independent-Day-9170

ProudlyWearingThe8

Well, guess who is going to get one hell of a large fine from the EU to the tune of billions for breaking the EU's data protection laws?

Krishnath_Dragon

This will not even make it to the major news stations in Germany. We are so …

assembly_faulty

So the scaremongering about every Chinese made device reporting back to Chinese applies to US now ? (Or always had)

Ninjaisawesome

So this means France should boycott Microsoft similar to the way the US is boycotting Huawei?

P.S. You/they should also worry about Cisco...

WaryOfSocialMedia

French people, this is your queue to start burning things again.

If you start the tiki-march towards the datacenter, maybe the rest of us in Europe will grow some balls and follow.

kickedbyhorse

So the crazy people who were saying don't rely on Microsoft even with data stored in EU have turned out to be correct

drfusterenstein

Intrepid_Chard_3535

Where is the suprised pikachu meme when you need it?

asidealex

Microsoft will discontinue using China-based engineers for Department of Defense systems due to national security concerns, following alarming reports about vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Pentagon Tech Support Changes

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