Pentagon will "reconsider" parts of the $10 billion JEDI contract

[David Matthews]

Recap: Amazon has already convinced a judge to temporarily halt Microsoft's work on the JEDI contract. Now, the Pentagon is launching a 120-day review of the contract. It's unknown whether this will lead to another bidding war or if Microsoft will keep its $10 billion prize.

The Pentagon has filed court documents indicating that it wants to reconsider the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract as first reported by CNN Business. According to the court documents, the DoD "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS."

This is obviously good news for Amazon who aggressively challenged the award in court, claiming that Microsoft won the contract because of political bias from President Trump. The company argued that the President exerted "improper pressure" due to his feud with Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos.

Consequently, Amazon notched an initial victory last month when a judge temporarily halted Microsoft's work on the contract due to Amazon's complaints. The exact reasoning behind the injunction is unknown.

"We look forward to complete, fair, and effective corrective action that fully insulates the re-evaluation from political influence and corrects the many issues affecting the initial flawed award," Amazon said in response to the Pentagon's court filings.

Microsoft also responded saying, "We believe the Department of Defense made the correct decision when they awarded the contract. However, we support their decision to reconsider a small number of factors as it is likely the fastest way to resolve all issues and quickly provide the needed modern technology to people across our armed forces."

Although multiple cloud vendors initially competed for the massive JEDI contract, Amazon was the prohibitive favorite. The company already scored a huge win in 2013, winning a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency and becoming the sole cloud provider for the United States Intelligence Community. However, it was Microsoft who ended up landing the JEDI contract in a large boost to their Azure portfolio.

The Pentagon requested 120 days to review the contract. Despite Amazon being the primary force behind the reassessment, the DoD doesn't plan to discuss the decision with either Amazon or Microsoft.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/84395-pentagon-reconsider-parts-10-billion-jedi-contract.html

 

[Uncle Al]

BIG mistake. Amazon's track record is abysmal and should be treated as such .....

 

[Yynxs]

I've been commenting for a while on probable China's Military Intelligence operatives in the tech field. The recent prosecutions of professors for collaborating with China may have given some pause. I'm hoping the massive vetting requirements on long term MS employees is part of that, but I'm guessing it's probably just judicial activism and not an increase in counterintelligence awareness (one can dream but the CIA contract shows that it's just dreams).

 

[psycros]

I've been commenting for a while on probable China's Military Intelligence operatives in the tech field. The recent prosecutions of professors for collaborating with China may have given some pause. I'm hoping the massive vetting requirements on long term MS employees is part of that, but I'm guessing it's probably just judicial activism and not an increase in counterintelligence awareness (one can dream but the CIA contract shows that it's just dreams).

Every major American company has been infiltrated by China to some degree. Not a month goes by without a few Chinese engineers, managers and educators being nabbed trying to flee the country with wads of stolen work. I have a friend who works for a defense contractor and he says they have busted DOZENS of Chinese employees over the past five years trying to steal tech IP or install backdoors in their systems. It was so bad that for a while they had to put a hiring freeze on all Chinese nationals and even some Chinese-Americans with close ties to the PRC.

 

[Yynxs]

Every major American company has been infiltrated by China to some degree. Not a month goes by without a few Chinese engineers, managers and educators being nabbed trying to flee the country with wads of stolen work. I have a friend who works for a defense contractor and he says they have busted DOZENS of Chinese employees over the past five years trying to steal tech IP or install backdoors in their systems. It was so bad that for a while they had to put a hiring freeze on all Chinese nationals and even some Chinese-Americans with close ties to the PRC.

Yes. But let that ethnic filtering get in the papers and watch the fuzz fly about. It's sometimes difficult to believe how many people do not remotely understand industrial espionage, let alone nation-state espionage.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Previously winning a similar contract does not make a company a favorite to keep winning those contracts. Just the opposite really. The govt loves to 'spread the love' when it comes to prime contractors. This is the reason why all our planes aren't all Lockheed or Boeing, and both sub-contract out work to one another.