State Department cuts China policy staff amid major overhaul
The sweeping State Department reorganization that was launched last week has trimmed personnel and consolidated offices that help craft the U.S. diplomatic response to Beijing's aggression in Asia and deal with the global tech competition with China, said current and former officials, who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals.
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Why Security Fundamentals Still Matter Experts agree that the real shock isn't the technology itself—it's the lack of security basics that made the breach possible. As Aditi Gupta of Black Duck noted, the McDonald's incident was less a case of advanced hacking and more a 'series of critical failures,' ranging from unchanged default credentials and inactive accounts left open for years, to missing access controls and weak monitoring. The result: an old admin account that hadn't been touched since 2019 was all it took to unlock a massive trove of personal data. For many in the industry, this raises bigger questions. Randolph Barr, CISO at Cequence Security, points out that the use of weak, guessable credentials like '123456' in a live production system is not just a technical slip—it signals deeper problems with security culture and governance. When basic measures like credential management, access controls, and even multi-factor authentication are missing, the entire security posture comes into question. If a security professional can spot these flaws in minutes, Barr says, 'bad actors absolutely will—and they'll be encouraged to dig deeper for other easy wins.' And this isn't just about AI or McDonald's. Security missteps of this kind tend to follow each new 'game-changing' technology. As PointGuard AI's William Leichter observes, organizations often rush to deploy the latest tools, driven by hype and immediate gains, while seasoned security professionals get sidelined. It happened with cloud, and now, he says, 'it's AI's turn: tools are being rolled out hastily, with immature controls and sloppy practices.' Automation and the Illusion of Security McDonald's isn't alone in betting big on AI to speed up hiring and make life easier for franchisees and HR teams. Automated chatbots like Olivia are supposed to streamline applications, assess candidates, and remove human bottlenecks. But as this incident shows, convenience can't come at the expense of basic digital hygiene. Simple safeguards—unique credentials, robust authentication, and proper access controls—were missing entirely. The rush to digitize and automate HR brings with it a false sense of security. When sensitive data is managed by machines, it's easy to assume the system is secure. But technology is only as strong as the practices behind it. Lessons for the Future If there's a lesson here, it's that technology should never substitute for common sense. Automated hiring systems, especially those powered by AI, are only as secure as the most basic controls. The ease with which researchers accessed the McHire backend shows that old problems—default passwords, missing MFA—are still some of the biggest threats, even in the age of chatbots. Companies embracing automation need to build security into the foundations, not as an afterthought. And applicants should remember that behind every 'friendly' AI bot is a company making choices about how to protect—or neglect—their privacy. The Price of Convenience The McDonald's McHire data leak is a warning to every company automating hiring, and to every job seeker trusting a bot with their future. Technology can streamline the process, but it should never circumvent or subvert security. The real world isn't as neat as a chatbot's conversation tree. If we aren't careful, the push for convenience will keep putting real people at risk.
