this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Not necessarily disloyal. But different loyalties.
Microsoft makes software used by governments all over the world. Any government that want to gather intelligence or blackmail another government could do it through inserted exploits in Microsoft's code. The US could go straight to Microsoft to this in an official capacity. Other nations would influence the individuals working on the project to do it covertly. If your country asked you to do this, they are likely able to convince you it's in the national interest and you would be harming your country if you didn't.
It's not that they wouldn't be loyal, it's who they would be loyal to.
You know, its funny. There was a recent documentary on Netflix, called "The Octopus Murders" that goes into a theft committed by the Reagan DOJ of a $6M software suite called PROMIS. The suite was edited and repackaged, then distributed to foreign governments under a new Reagan-Admin friendly vendor with a collection of backdoors and security bugs that US officials could use to infiltrate networks of allied nations.
If our efforts to rapidly and comprehensively outsource all our software overseas resulted in the same thing reflected back on us, I would find that very amusing.
But I've yet to see any actual evidence of malfeasance by overseas coders. More often - in my personal experience working with overseas software companies - they're overworked, underpaid, and in a race deliver quantity over quality.