More reports have surfaced detailing Microsoft’s growing acquiescence to the Chinese government’s rules of their business road, which threaten U.S. data security and impose widespread censorship. It’s time to ask: Can Americans trust Microsoft right now?
For millions of Americans, a typical workday begins by sitting down at a machine of some sort running the latest Windows operating system, perhaps logging on to Microsoft Teams to connect with coworkers or conduct a teleconference, and accessing essential company data stored as Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and whatnot on OneDrive. We entrust this single, massive multinational corporation with data covering practically our entire working lives — not to mention personal ones. Our government relies on them, too.
Since it was founded in a garage by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, Microsoft has long outgrown the borders of the United States in its quest for greater market dominance — and good for them! China is an alluring market for any ambitious U.S. company. For the last two decades, Microsoft has grown its footprint there to nearly 10,000 employees (4-5 percent of its total workforce). Around 80 percent of these workers are software engineers working on source code for products used in the U.S. government and businesses, including Office, Exchange, Teams, Windows and Azure.
As most global companies do, Microsoft has long known that operating in any way, shape or form in this market comes with an increasingly high price — and one that they have perhaps been too willing to pay. The Chinese government demands full access to backdoors from foreign technology companies in their source code, allowing intelligence officials and government agencies to snoop away surreptitiously. This was codified in China’s 2016 National Cybersecurity Law, which requires companies like Microsoft to store data on servers in China, providing easier access for spy agencies to monitor and intercept whatever data they please. As such, Microsoft willingly provides them with source code, encryption keys, and backdoor access to their ever-growing suite of software products.
With this access, the Chinese have already obtained sensitive U.S. government information and read emails between U.S. government officials. The risk is not a hypothetical one. They are, of course, always spying on us, and now they are using their access to Microsoft-provided backdoors to help them do it. Obviously, the problem is growing. The Chinese are becoming more brazen about it, and if left unchecked, it could lead to catastrophic outcomes.
For example, as China plays a critical role in the development of cutting-edge AI systems that are just beginning to revolutionize the way we live and work, it is crucial that we pay closer attention to the Microsoft matter. Chinese laws give them access to the source code for OpenAI’s cutting-edge large language models. It is highly likely that the “proprietary” blueprints for the latest AI systems, including GPT-4o, are already in the hands of Chinese intelligence agencies.
This devil’s bargain that Microsoft and other U.S. tech companies have struck with China doesn’t just lead to security compromises and intellectual property theft. It has rendered them complicit in a host of human rights violations by the Chinese regime. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has censored results related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, buried accounts of outspoken critics of the government, and even blocked Bing’s AI chatbot from answering queries critical of the regime. Even the U.S. government has raised an eyebrow over what it perceives to be the company’s indifference to the oppression of China’s Uighur population.
And so on. I want to emphasize that I do not believe that Microsoft has some sinister, anti-American agenda. Not at all. They are trying to grow and thrive and benefit shareholders. They know doing business with foreign governments can be dicey, and they are not the only ones following the “rules” set in place by the Chinese. Clearly, we are being placed in danger by this willingness to play along. We are at risk as a nation, and with cyber threats continually on the rise and tensions between the United States and China increasing at an alarming rate, something has to change.
Microsoft must put American cybersecurity ahead of the company’s ambition and bottom line. If it cannot do this, perhaps the federal government needs to implement some serious cybersecurity reforms. It would be an excellent issue for our presidential candidates to weigh in on, but as far as I can tell, no one’s even touched on it in a serious fashion. Pretty much like everything else, that’s actually important. God help us, but that’s another column.
