We’re still waiting to find out exactly what’s going to happen with the whole Twitter deal and Elon Musk, but I really hope that he manages to secure the company and take it private. It’s desperately needed.
If you look at most of the major companies today, I think you would find it difficult to find one that doesn’t have some level of corruption, some worse than others.
The United States government informed the former head of security at Twitter earlier this year that there was at least one agent of China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), working as an employee at the firm.
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13, whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who served as Twitter’s head of security for approximately 14 months before being fired earlier this year, revealed this as one of the revelations that he had to share.
“The corporate security physical security team had been contacted and told that there was at least one agent of the MSS, which is one of China’s intelligence services, on the payroll inside Twitter,” he said.
The whistleblower testified that when he raised his concerns about foreign agents at Twitter to an executive, they were dismissed.
“When I said, ‘I am confident that we have a foreign agent,’ [the executive’s] response was, ‘Well since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more; let’s keep growing the office,’” he recalled during the hearing.
Zatko said that Twitter would be a “goldmine” for any foreign intelligence agency that was able to place an operative inside.
“If you place somebody on Twitter … as we know has happened, it would be very difficult for Twitter to find them. They will probably be able to stay there for a long period of time, and gain significant information to provide back on either targeting people or on information as to Twitter’s decisions and discussions and … the direction of the company.”
China really does pose a threat to our national security and it looks like the U.S. is just letting them into every area of our life that they can. I’m not saying we should discriminate against them or anything, by no mean should we do that, but we should make sure that we are properly vetting people better than what we are currently.