Out here in Dixie County, we still do a lot of things the old-fashioned way.
But even in a small town like ours, the schools where we send our kids, the courthouse where folks file their paperwork, the utilities that keep our lights on and the Sheriff’s Office that keeps us safe all run on one company’s software: Microsoft.
From the biggest agency in Tallahassee to the smallest Town Hall on a dirt road, one tech company is involved in some way in just about everything our government touches. Every Floridian should be paying attention.
You really can’t escape it. NASA’s Artemis II crew had to radio Houston mid-mission this spring when Microsoft Outlook went down on the way to the moon. “I have two Outlooks, and neither one is working,” Commander Reid Wiseman said over the open channel.
It sounds like a joke, but you can’t even escape Microsoft in space.
That kind of grip on our government would be one thing if it came with a real commitment to America. It hasn’t. For years, Microsoft has cozied up to Beijing. It used engineers based in Communist China to help maintain sensitive Pentagon systems. It tipped off Chinese firms about flaws in its own software before warning the U.S. government or its American customers. And when Chinese state-backed hackers came calling, they knew exactly where to hit us.
Is that a coincidence? Microsoft employs close to 10,000 people inside a country whose laws require companies to hand over their source code and encryption keys to the government. The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t see Microsoft as a foreign company; it sees it as a resource. And Florida’s taxpayers, right down to the folks in Cross City, are helping foot the bill.
That’s exactly why the Federal Trade Commission’s expanding investigation of Microsoft is long overdue. It’s the most serious scrutiny the company has faced in a generation. For years, government at every level has been locked into Microsoft’s systems, with no competitor to turn to and no easy way out.
That kind of dependence isn’t just a security problem — it’s the sort of market dominance our antitrust laws were designed to address. When one company leaves taxpayers with no way out, we all pay more and get less.
This is where America First has to mean something real. President Donald Trump has already moved to bar engineers based in Communist China from working on our defense systems. Rick Scott has filed legislation to divest from China’s military, and Ashley Moody has built a record of holding America’s adversaries accountable. Our Florida delegation is exactly the group that should press the FTC to finish the job and break the trap that leaves small counties like mine with no real alternative and an even bigger bill.
The most important thing we can protect is the future of the families in our communities. A major breach would be an absolute disaster for the town I love and for communities across Florida. We shouldn’t be paying more for software that leaves us more exposed and more dependent on a company that keeps choosing Beijing’s comfort over our country’s security.
We owe our kids better than that.
___
Jovantè R. Teague serves as Vice Chair of the Republican Party of Florida.
