Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that he was putting an end to a program that had for nearly ten years allowed Chinese coders access to Department of Defense cloud systems.

Hegseth shared a video in which he described the “Digital Escorts” program — implemented under former President Barack Obama — under which Microsoft employed Chinese coders to “support sensitive DOD cloud systems” under the supervision of American contractors.

WATCH:

The use of Chinese Nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments is over. pic.twitter.com/jZdcHwKho2

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) August 27, 2025

“Last month the Department of Defense was made aware of an Obama-Biden era legacy program called Digital Escorts,” Hegseth began. “For nearly a decade, Microsoft has used Chinese coders, remotely supervised by U.S. contractors, to support sensitive DOD cloud systems. The program was designed to comply with contracting rules but it exposed the department to unacceptable risk.”

“I mean, if you’re thinking ‘America First,’ and common sense, this doesn’t pass either of those tests,” Hegseth continued. “So I initiated an immediate review of this vulnerability and I want to report our initial findings.”

Hegseth went on to explain that his review had determined that any benefits were not worth the potential risk of allowing Chinese nationals to have that kind of access to sensitive information, especially information pertaining to Defense Department.

“The use of Chinese Nationals to service Department of Defense cloud environments? It’s over,” he declared. “We’ve issued a formal letter of concern to Microsoft documenting this breach of trust, and we’re requiring a third party audit of Microsoft’s Digital Escort program — including the code and the submissions by Chinese nationals.”

Hegseth also announced a separate investigation into the program and into all of the Chinese nationals who had been part of it: “Did they put anything in the code that we didn’t know about? We’re going to find out.”

“It blows my mind that I’m even saying these things, it’s such common sense,” Hegseth said as he once again reiterated his intent to remove all Chinese employees from access to DOD information. “We expect vendors doing business with the Department of Defense to put U.S. national security ahead of profit maximization … This never should have happened in the first place.”

In a viral video from Dundee, Scotland, three schoolgirls stand on a hilltop. One clutches a knife and a hatchet, brandishing them toward an advancing man. Another shields a third girl in a pink sweatshirt, her voice breaking as she cries: “Don’t touch my sister, she’s twelve!”

It is a moment that distills civilizational decline. In that scream lies the sound of failure — the burden of defense shifted from the strong to the small, from institutions to children. Collapse rarely announces itself with flames and rubble; more often, it creeps in through abdication.

The state’s first response was not to confront the predator, but to charge the girl for holding a weapon to defend herself and her sister.

Credit: @Basil_TGMD/X.com. UK Child Defends Self.

This is the inversion of justice that defines too much of Western life today: The fear of offending a racial and religious minority outweighs the fear of harming innocent civilians, including and especially young girls and women. “Tolerance” is stretched to excuse the intolerable, and girls are left to bear the costs of the public class’s cowardice. The impulse to confront evil has been hollowed out, replaced by the reflex to punish those who resist it or even name it.

The forthcoming “Women and the West” report, which I authored for Independent Women, reckons with this reality. It documents how Western societies practice what scholars call “suicidal empathy” — the refusal to confront illiberal practices, even when they imperil women. It is why British authorities ignored grooming gangs that preyed on thousands of girls, because the men were Pakistani Muslims and the girls were largely white. It is why Sweden, once among the safest nations on earth, now faces epidemic levels of sexual violence. Why a Dundee schoolgirl is treated as a criminal while her desperate cry — “She’s twelve!” — is brushed aside.

But the tragedy extends beyond abandoned girls. It is also about men stripped of their civilizational role as protectors. Where were the men in Dundee? Where were the men in Rottingham and in the other cities across the UK while their daughters were being raped? We know the legal system bears the brunt of the blame: Those who act are punished. In the UK, even those who speak out about what happens risk jail.

America knows this story too: Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran, intervened on a New York subway to restrain a violent man threatening passengers. For protecting strangers, he was not honored but indicted. The message on both sides of the Atlantic is too often: step forward, risk prison; stay silent, stay safe. But safety purchased by silence comes at the cost of culture itself. A society that criminalizes protectors breeds passive men and terrified women. Ultimately Americans rallied around Daniel Penny. Our commitment to free speech and to the sacred concept of the right to self-defense trumped our tendency for suicidal empathy. Will the UK rally around this brave girl in Scotland? 

The fate of women has always been the measure of a civilization’s strength. Where law is upheld and courage honored, women thrive. Where cowardice reigns and defenders are vilified, women and girls suffer first and most. From Kabul to Cologne to Dundee, the pattern holds.

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True liberalism never meant limitless tolerance. It meant ordered liberty: borders that protect sovereignty, cultures bound by shared norms, and institutions willing to enforce justice without apology. Instead, in the name of inclusivity, we deny reality, manipulate statistics, silence dissent, and prosecute children while excusing the predators who terrify them.

A frightened girl’s cry — “She’s twelve!” — is not just a viral clip. It is a warning. We have reached a point where the natural defenders of civilization — its men — are absent or penalized, and where its most vulnerable — its girls — are forced to take up arms in their stead.

Strength sustains freedom. Freedom safeguards women. If the West cannot recover the will to defend its daughters and honor its sons who rise to protect, then our undoing will not come by invasion from without but surrender from within.

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Meaghan Mobbs, PhD, is the Director of the Center for American Safety and Security at Independent Women. She is the President of the R.T. Weatherman Foundation, a private operating foundation, providing humanitarian support in Ukraine. She is a presidential appointee to the Board of Visitors at the United States Military Academy at West Point and a gubernatorial appointee to Board of Visitors at the Virginia Military Academy.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.