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Trump adviser asked Microsoft why it wouldn’t spy for the US, company president reveals in new book

  • The inquiry showed that the US continues to have its own issues with surveillance and cybersecurity

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Brad Smith, president at Microsoft Corp, recounted how a Trump adviser questioned the company’s stand against spying on its users on behalf of the US government in his new book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age. Photo: Reuters

An adviser to US President Donald Trump once questioned Microsoft Corp for not spying on its users around the world on behalf of the government, the software giant’s president has revealed, as Washington continues its campaign against China’s Huawei Technologies over national security concerns.

“As an American company, why won’t you agree to help the US government spy on people in other countries?” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, recounted how he was asked by the adviser on a trip to Washington. That inquiry is highlighted in Smith’s new book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, without naming the person or other details about that visit to the US capital.

Smith wrote that he responded by shifting the question to Trump Hotels, which had opened new properties at the time of the meeting in the Middle East and in Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House. “Are these hotels going to spy on people from other countries who stay there?” Smith said. “It doesn’t seem like it would be good for the family business.” The Trump adviser nodded in agreement, according to the book.

Tools and Weapons, which was released by UK-based publishers Penguin Press and Hodder & Stoughton on Tuesday, analyses the benefits and risks from advances in technology as well as Microsoft’s position in major issues, from privacy and security to geopolitics.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft Corp, speaks during a Bloomberg Studio 1.0 television interview in San Francisco, California, on September 4. Photo: Bloomberg
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft Corp, speaks during a Bloomberg Studio 1.0 television interview in San Francisco, California, on September 4. Photo: Bloomberg

A Microsoft representative did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about Smith’s meeting with the Trump adviser.

The revelation about the Trump adviser’s inquiry in Tools and Weapons showed that the US continues to have its own issues with surveillance and cybersecurity, despite Washington’s accusations that products from telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei can be used to spy for Beijing. Huawei, caught in the middle of an escalating US-China trade war, has strenuously and repeatedly denied the allegations, saying that it is not a proxy for Beijing’s security apparatus.

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