Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be “more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence.”

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, “has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security,” Smith told Congress.

His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia.

According to Microsoft whistleblower Andrew Harris, Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the “security nightmare.” Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem, choosing profits over security, ProPublica reported.

This apparent negligence led to one of the largest cyberattacks in US history, and officials’ sensitive data was compromised due to Microsoft’s security failures. The China-linked hackers stole 60,000 US State Department emails, Reuters reported. And several federal agencies were hit, giving attackers access to sensitive government information, including data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica reported. Even Microsoft itself was breached, with a Russian group accessing senior staff emails this year, including their “correspondence with government officials,” Reuters reported.

4 points

too late

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9 points

They legally can’t prioritize shit but shareholder profits. We are all about to watch a US based company, purposefully fuck over the US government and possibly us by extension, and nothing will happen. Fuck this oligarchy.

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13 points

They legally can’t prioritize shit but shareholder profits.

This is a lie… Stop spreading it as it helps corporations hide behind it to do evil shit

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4 points

I just jumped down a rabbit hole, thank you. Where the fuck did that statement come from? I didn’t find the source of it. Only that its not true.

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2 points

There was some case where shareholders sued the board or the CEO because they were borderline embezzling.

In the judgement there was some language that these thieves were not prioritizing the shareholders and from that, the whole lie evolved that USA corporations have to kill their grandma’s if that’s the only way to profit

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35 points

no they won’t. these pricks literally fired their entire AI Ethics team… that tells you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.

the only thing they are gonna do about this is figure out a way to make people not angry, but continue to fo as much shady shit as they can.

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-1 points

ai ethics teams are a joke. They deserve to get fired.

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8 points

Definitely wasn’t aware of that…

literally fired their entire AI Ethics team

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4 points

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23638823/microsoft-ethics-society-team-responsible-ai-layoffs

It’s always one of the first things to get cut when companies try to save money.

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1 point

Well I know companies are willing to terminate employees for the sake of keeping up profits or preventing the loss of a company, no doubt. But the fact that they terminated an entire department - AI Ethics. Which I have to only assume is not a good idea when you’re implementing a new technology that can definitely go out of control.

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34 points

I’ve spent the better part of my life watching microsoft fuck people over and then when they finally - finally get called out on it they do a bunch of bashful aw-shucksing before doing it again and again and again.

No.

Microsoft is dead. Kill it with fire. The US government should have known better, but they didn’t because like every other organization they have a boatload of clueless mid-level managers who only every learned Windows and fall for microsoft’s garbage every time, despite the eye-popping price.

NO MICROSOFT. EVER. They’re a criminal organizaiton, the amount of destruction they’ve created will never be known.

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26 points

According to Microsoft whistleblower Andrew Harris, Microsoft spent years ignoring a vulnerability while he proposed fixes to the “security nightmare.” Instead, Microsoft feared it might lose its government contract by warning about the bug and allegedly downplayed the problem

This says everything about this shitty company. Worst of the worst. Because that’s how they make 90% of their cash. By exploiting licensing deals and siphoning data to sell to whomever because they do not care who it is so long as they bid the highest.

It’s amazing no one has tried to break up their control over PCs. Make this world make sense.

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