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News Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
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CrimsonPhantom Offline
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Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
Quote: The up-to-$10 billion cloud contract is enjoined until “further notice from the court” while Amazon pursues a lawsuit.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from moving forward with its massive cloud program while a lawsuit from Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is heard to determine whether President Donald Trump exerted undue influence in the decision to award it to Microsoft.

Judge Patricia E. Campbell-Smith granted Amazon’s motion for a preliminary injunction, stopping work on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud “until further notice of the court.” The parties have until Feb. 27 to propose redactions to Campbell-Smith’s decision.

After the JEDI contract went to Microsoft in October, Amazon sued the Defense Department. The suit argues that the Pentagon made numerous errors in awarding the contract; it also states that Amazon is technically the far superior enterprise cloud provider, especially for hosting high-value secret and top-secret data. For instance, one of the requirements for JEDI is that the provider be able to host “top secret” data at Impact Level 6. Amazon has been hosting data at that level for the government for years. In December, Microsoft was awarded temporary, 90-day accreditation to host data at Impact Level 6.

Amazon also argues that Trump has exerted undue influence over the decision with his frequent swipes at Amazon and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

The nonprofit group Protect Democracy this week filed an amicus brief on Amazon’s behalf, arguing that “Amazon has plausibly alleged that President Trump interfered in the DOD procurement process to advance his own interests, which would violate his Article II duties under the Faithful Execution Clause. And Amazon has plausibly alleged that President Trump has engaged in a pattern of retaliating against Amazon and The Washington Post, which could violate the First Amendment.”

The nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, this week filed a similar brief, saying that “the President’s reported pattern of attempts to influence the contracting decisions of multiple federal agencies suggests a disregard for the requirements of federal ethics and procurement law, and bolsters the conclusion that AWS’s allegations of improper interference here are based upon a ‘reasonable factual predicate’ and ‘appear to be sufficiently well grounded” to warrant supplementation of the record.’”

The Defense Department, meanwhile, says that a stay in implementing JEDI, which is worth up to $10 billion over 10 years, would hurt national security. A DoD declaration to the court filed this week, written by Air Force Lt. Gen. Bradford J. Shwedo, Chief Information Officer on the Joint Staff, argues for the “importance of accelerating enterprise cloud adoption.”

Says Shwedo, “the continued absence of DOD-wide, enterprise cloud computing capability seriously impedes the military’s ability to collaborate and share information with our military services, partner nations, and the intelligence community…delivery is required before we can begin strategy and [tactics, techniques, and procedures] development,” for next-generation connected warfare concepts.

In a statement, Frank Shaw, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Communications, said, “While we are disappointed with the additional delay we believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require. We have confidence in the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft.”

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Bezos needs to get over it.
02-13-2020 04:46 PM
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
Bezos has bought all those non-profits.

To me, this would discourage any use of Amazon for any defense contracts.
02-13-2020 05:53 PM
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Fort Bend Owl Online
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
Screw Amazon. This is one of the few things I agree with President Trump on. Amazon has put so many people out of business and has zero empathy for the small business owners (many of whom are forced to use their web site at a loss to sell their items). I'll be disappointed if the Pentagon has to change the awarding of the contract.

Plus, are they really trying to say that Microsoft's Cloud Services are inadequate? I find that hard to believe.
02-13-2020 05:57 PM
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TigerBlue4Ever Online
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
How could any sitting POTUS put undue influence on a decision regarding something under his purview? Is he not the top dog as CinC??
02-13-2020 06:17 PM
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UofMstateU Online
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
So, the guy who got compromised when his own dicks pics got stolen and leaked to the press is trying to tell us that his systems are where our nations secret information needs to be housed?
02-13-2020 06:31 PM
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CrimsonPhantom Offline
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
[Image: r06lbez5rt711.png]

Here's the real reason Bezo's wants the contract:

[Image: bill-gates-regains-spot-as-worlds-riches...775724.png]
(This post was last modified: 02-13-2020 06:42 PM by CrimsonPhantom.)
02-13-2020 06:40 PM
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CrimsonPhantom Offline
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RE: Judge Puts Pentagon’s Giant JEDI Cloud Contract On Hold
Quote:MUNICH – Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he never felt pressured by the White House last year to review the Pentagon’s controversial $10 billion contract to build the military’s first giant cloud network.

His comment comes two days after a federal judge blocked the JEDI contract from moving forward in order to assess whether President Donald Trump had undue influence on its award.

Esper said he made the fateful August decision to stop and review the Pentagon’s contracting process after meeting with members of Congress and seeing media reports about the decision to award such a large project to a single service provider.

“I never felt pressure from the White House,” Esper told reporters at the Munich Security Conference. The secretary said he would not discuss the details of his conversations with the president or White House staff at the time.

“The decision to conduct a review early on is a decision I made — I made— based on as I conducted my rounds on The Hill prior to my nomination process, I heard a lot from members on both sides of the aisle. Obviously, a lot was in the media as well,” he said. “I knew that it was something I needed to learn a great deal about.”

At the time, Amazon Web Services was generally considered the only company that could meet the Pentagon’s strict classification requirements on the project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. Smaller companies and Amazon opponents protested the Pentagon’s requirements and launched public – and private – campaigns to undercut the competition. Eventually, President Trump — known for feuding with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — began to comment on the controversy. Four GOP lawmakers quickly asked the president to stay out of it.

Ultimately, DOD ruled its contracting process was clean, but then shocked the defense industry by awarding the JEDI contract to Microsoft.

Amazon has protested the JEDI award, arguing Esper’s review favored Microsoft because it added three months to the decision timeline, already a year late, giving Microsoft time to meet more of the Pentagon’s requirements. The company also has tried to paint Esper as unqualified to oversee JEDI because of questions surrounding his decision to recuse himself from the award decision, revealing his son worked for IBM, an early bidder.

Esper said on Saturday that he would not comment on the court’s decision this week but repeated his plea to get the new cloud for the military as fast as possible.

“It’s important to the war-fighter that we move forward with this contract. I think it makes us far more efficient on the battlefield when you can get into a cloud and overlay artificial intelligence. It improves your speed, your timeliness, you have better reliability, you can better protect data, it’s more cybersecure – so look, this is affecting the war-fighter, we have to move forward, it’s gone on too long and I hope that we can get over this latest issue and keep moving forward to deliver to our warfighter the capabilities they need to fight and win on the battlefield,” Esper said.

Amazon argues that Esper’s decision to delay the JEDI award last year undercuts the Pentagon’s argument finding a winner is an immediate imperative.

Part of the JEDI contract requires the winning company to be able to demonstrate it can post secret info to the system within six months of the award and top-secret data within 270 days. Microsoft still has to meet that requirement. Amazon already could. Instead, Microsoft secured in December the authority for its cloud, Azure, to host some classified information for 90 days, without receiving full accreditation.

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02-15-2020 07:15 PM
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