- Trump calls for the firing of Microsoft’s Lisa Monaco and said it’s over national security concerns.
- Monaco is a Biden-era deputy attorney general and joined Microsoft as head of Global Affairs in June.
- Microsoft recently cut some AI and cloud services to Israel’s military amid privacy concerns.
President Donald Trump called for the firing of Microsoft’s president of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, on Friday.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Monaco a “menace to US National Security” due to Microsoft’s government contracts and said her government security clearances were recently revoked.
“It is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco,” the president said in a post on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT.”
Monaco served as deputy attorney general in the Biden administration and as homeland security advisor in the Obama administration. According to her LinkedIn profile, she started her position as the head of Global Affairs at Microsoft in July.
Trump’s call for Monaco’s firing came a day after Microsoft wrote in an email to employees that it had cut off certain cloud and AI services to a division of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, following employee protests and an internal probe into reports that Israel built a system to track Palestinians’ phone calls.
In the publicly available blog post published Thursday, Microsoft reiterated its principles that it does not provide technology to “facilitate mass surveillance of civilians ” and that it would “respect and protect the privacy rights of our customers.”
According to a statement on the US General Services Administration website, earlier in September, Microsoft agreed to offer around $3.1 billion in savings over one year on cloud services used by government agencies.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
