Jeff Bozo loses $10 Billion JEDI bid to Bill Gates - Windoze Triumphs AWS

The Trump feud that torpedoed Amazon's bid to win a $14.6b Pentagon contract

October 29, 2019

www.smh.com.au...

So it looks like Trump got payback on Jeff Bozo and Washington Post. I guess after all the concerns raised by the other competitors getting Trump to get his Military to look "closer" at the nuts & bolts of the tenders proved fruitful.

As news emerged that Microsoft had beaten rival Amazon to the most coveted and bitterly contested Pentagon contract in decades, the word that kept cropping up in reports was "surprise".

The $10 billion ($14.6 billion) Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) "war cloud" computing contract, which is set to drastically modernise the US military's computer systems, was initially believed to be "gift-wrapped" for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Rivals complained that the bidding process was rigged to favour Amazon, that holds a 48 per cent share of the $US250 billion ($366 billion) cloud market.

In truth, the decision to deny Amazon had likely been on the cards for months - or at least from the moment that Donald Trump, the president, took a personal interest in the bidding process.

In July Mr Trump said that he had received "tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon". This followed the dismissal of a lawsuit by competing company Oracle, which claimed the process was "riddled with improprieties". Oracle's boss Safra Catz was also reported to have complained privately to Trump about Jedi.

BUT - Did Trump go too far in interfering in theprocess?

CNN reported that a White House source said that the president wanted to "scuttle" the bidding process.

Federal acquisition laws forbid government officials, including the president, from influencing contract awards such as Jedi. But since the initial intervention in July, Mr Trump and some of his closest allies have made clear that they wanted to further scrutinise Amazon's seemingly clear path to the contract.

The public pressure over the last few months from the Trump administration has been acute.

Guy Snodgrass, a former speech writer for James Mattis, claims that Trump called the former defence secretary in 2018 and told him to "screw Amazon" out of the $US10 billion contract, an order he says Mattis refused. Mattis announced his resignation from the Trump administration in December after a series of policy disagreements.

Either way it could come back to haunt Trump

"It's important that we maintain a fair and competitive process for DoD contracts, but for the president to use the power of his office to punish critics in the media would be a complete abuse of power," Virginia Senator Mark Warner said on Twitter. "This does not pass the smell test & we need some answers."

"Impeach Trump" LOL

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

RE: "Guy Snodgrass, a former speech writer for James Mattis, claims that Trump called the former defence secretary in 2018 and told him to "screw Amazon" out of the $US10 billion contract, an order he says Mattis refused. Mattis announced his resignation from the Trump administration in December after a series of policy disagreements."

What would have been Republican reaction if the word "Trump" were replaced by the word "Obama" and this happened before 2016.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

I see this as a good thing (though I don't have all the facts, and may change my mind).

Amazon already has the CIA cloud service... Do we really want to put all of our national eggs in one private basket? I'd rather not.

Personally, I don't even like the though of some of our most secretive agencies outsourcing data retention in the first place.

As someone who is literally performing a POC on Azure vs AWS for a top company, I can understand why.

*BUILT-IN LICENSING COSTS!

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Trump used his influence as President to deny someone a government contract?

Way to go, sure, let's piss off someone with billions of dollars so they can go sue the government. Pretty sure they will find some emails, evidence or testimony that will lead to a loss of tax payer dollars.

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Trump used his influence as President to deny someone a government contract?

Way to go, sure, let's piss off someone with billions of dollars so they can go sue the government. Pretty sure they will find some emails, evidence or testimony that will lead to a loss of tax payer dollars.

You'd rather we do what Nancy Pelosi does, and just give the contracts to her husband's company?

originally posted by: dfnj2015
What would have been Republican reaction if the word "Trump" were replaced by the word "Obama" and this happened before 2016.

Come now, you know that Muslim Obama screwed the military, he would not have given them any money. IN fact he would have given that money to Iran.

a reply to: grey580

I'd hope politicians can't use personal quarrels to keep our government from using the most competent vendors, though I'm not naive and know this isn't always if mostly the case.

I'm not too quick to pin this all on Trump though. Of course Amazon is going to cry foul, but I need more than Mattis's former writer saying Trump told his boss to "screw Amazon".

I don't think this is something that would be able to stay under wraps if he truly had a say in whether or not they got the contract... But my gut is telling me a president doesn't have the end all be all say in what contracts are awarded.

This is why Bill Gates is voting for Trump in 2020.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

No.

Amazon was going through GSA contracting and bidding for this contract. There was no handing of contracts to Amazon.

And now Amazon will be appealing to the GSA and possibly suing for damages.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

From my experience with contracting there's "issues".

In any case. The GSA will investigate and Amazon will probably sue.

originally posted by: Tempter
As someone who is literally performing a POC on Azure vs AWS for a top company, I can understand why.

*BUILT-IN LICENSING COSTS!

not to mention Azure is native to any windows user while AWS requires a specialized skill set, honestly it's a no brainer

So let me get this straight...to a member of the old deep state...."YOU'RE FIRED"

Already Posted HERE

Closed