The Pentagon has put on hold awarding $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract, after President Donald Trump suggested the Defense Department might have rigged the contest in favor of Amazon.
You do not been to be a new junkie to know Trump is not a fan of Amazon, nor its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who took the post on July 23, is now reviewing accusations of unfairness in the fiercely fought competition, the Pentagon announced Thursday, marking the president’s latest incursion into the arcane world of Defense Department contracting. Oracle has reportedly waged an aggressive lobbying campaign to push back on the competition, including talking with members of Congress.
In July, a judge ruled in favor of the Pentagon, finding that Oracle did not meet the contract requirements. Oracle had also filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, which found that the Pentagon’s procurement process was fair.
“Secretary Esper is committed to ensuring our warfighters have the best capabilities, including Artificial Intelligence, to remain the most lethal force in the world, while safeguarding taxpayer dollars,” Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday. “Keeping his promise to Members of Congress and the American public, Secretary Esper is looking at the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. No decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination.”
The review will delay the award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure ( JEDI) contract, which the Pentagon planned to hand out this month. The goal of JEDI is have a single one stop shop than the hundreds of clouds the DoD uses to day fro wide range of data and programs to keep the US military running.
