Like living ‘in Stalin’s Soviet Union’: At the same time Trump revoked security clearances from Krebs and SentinelOne, he issued another executive order revoking the security clearance of former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, as well as any entities associated with him, including the University of Pennsylvania.Taylor is a veteran of multiple Republican administrations who served as chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during Trump’s first administration and then wrote a tell-all book entitled A Warning under the pen name Anonymous. Trump’s EO regarding Taylor likewise presents a string of jangled allegations against his former official and calls for an investigation into Taylor’s activities as a government employee.Moreover, simultaneously with the EOs against Krebs, Taylor, and their associates, Trump signed a third order stripping the security clearances from prominent law firm Susman Godfrey, restricting its access to government buildings, and threatening to cancel federal contracts held by the firm’s clients.Susman Godfrey was just the latest in a string of clearance revocations hitting law firms and political “enemies,” such as President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.All these punitive actions are highly concerning to security clearance experts. “With each new executive order stripping or suspending security clearances, the language becomes more personal and less professional and in violation of existing law,” Mark Zaid, security clearance expert and managing partner of Mark S. Zaid, P.C., told CSO.”It is particularly egregious that innocent people who are nothing but associated with the targeted person are being punished as if they were guilty of something,” Zaid said. “We might as well live in Stalin’s Soviet Union.”
Problematic precedent for cybersecurity vendors: As bad as the EO is for Chris Krebs, it poses a highly problematic situation for SentinelOne. Cybersecurity vendors depend on security clearances to provide contracted services to the government and to obtain or discuss frequently classified or sensitive government intelligence for research they provide to clients.SentinelOne is a federal government contractor offering its Singularity Platform to various government agencies, including CISA. The platform is designed to “achieve zero trust, secure the cloud, and maximize data value.”In SentinelOne’s most recent earnings call, CEO Tomer Weingarten predicted solid growth in the company’s government business despite the cost-slashing work of Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. “We’ve actually seen our federal pipeline expand,” he said. “It’s a definite source of demand for us.”However, Trump’s order holds profound concerns for how SentinelOne conducts its business until it challenges the clearance revocation and goes through a long, time-consuming, well-established administrative and legal process “designed for the analog era,” as Tully Rinckey’s Meyer puts it. “If you lose the personnel security clearance of your team management officials in these companies, they lose their facilities clearance, which [is required] to contract for classified work.” Without that clearance, “every contract you have is now void, and you can’t perform on it” without going through the process, which can take months or even years, Meyer says.In a statement, SentinelOne told CSO, “Regarding the Executive Order dated April 9, 2025, which focused on Chris Krebs in his prior role as a government employee, we will actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel, currently less than 10 employees overall, only where required by existing government processes and procedures to secure government systems. Accordingly, we do not expect this to materially impact our business in any way.”
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