Big Tech giant Microsoft announced that it will be expanding its operations within China even despite confirming that a Chinese-backed cyber-attack on its systems compromised over 60,000 of its customers last week, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
On March 2nd, the company released a statement confirming that a Chinese “state-sponsored” hack was carried out against Microsoft Exchange’s software, installing malware in thousands of Microsoft devices and compromising the personal information of tens of thousands of customers. But just two days later, Microsoft announced that it would continue ahead with expanding its cloud computing service Azure with a focus on mainland China.
“Our intelligent, trustworthy, and neutral cloud platform,” Microsoft’s head of the Greater China Region Alain Crozier said in a statement, “has been empowering hundreds of thousands of developers, partners, and customers from both China and the world to achieve more with technical innovation and business transformation.”
The aforementioned hack of Microsoft systems included several high-profile targets such as the European Banking Authority, amongst thousands of other businesses. Even the Biden Administration, known for its soft approach to the Chinese regime, issued a statement declaring such Chinese hackers to be an “active threat” against the United States.
Ever since opening operations within China in 1992, Microsoft has had a long-standing working relationship with the Communist regime. In addition to developing key technology out of China rather than within America, Microsoft’s technology has been used by the Chinese government for its various authoritarian purposes, including facial recognition software to police its own citizens.
The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the attack, even despite both Microsoft and the U.S. government confirming that the regime was behind the hack.