During the Trump administration, in 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense signed a $10 billion contract with Microsoft, which generated a serious dispute between Microsoft and Amazon.
Amazon said that Trump was the one who decided to sign with Microsoft for political reasons, without taking into account the proposed technological solution.
Months later, the contract has been canceled, and now Amazon and Microsoft will have the opportunity to bid for a new one together with other companies.
This is the massive Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (Jedi) contract, and it has been canceled because of the following:
With the changing technology environment, it has become clear that the long-delayed Jedi Cloud contract no longer meets the requirements to fill DoD capability gaps.
They will now seek new proposals from a limited number of sources, including both Amazon and Microsoft, which are the only companies that could meet the requirements, sources indicate.
The idea is to replace the Defense Department’s aging computer networks with a single cloud system, guarding classified secrets and providing artificial intelligence-based analytics to the military.
Jeff Bezos was convinced that the choice for Microsoft was political, since he, in addition to Amazon, is the owner of the Washington Post, a half enemy of Trump. On Twitter, on some occasions, he has called him ‘Amazon Washington Post’, or ‘Jeff Bozo’, making it clear that there was a rather negative formed opinion about the owner of Amazon.
Amazon has long been arguing that Trump exerted undue influence in the hiring process, and the Pentagon faced open challenges by Amazon. This action may have influenced the now-canceled contract.
Microsoft, on the other hand, said the Defense Department has confidence in Microsoft and its technology, and they are confident they will continue to succeed.
