If there is a "secret war," it's to undermine the corruption of the process. The contract is written, as most preferred vendor contracts are, in such a way that

If there is a "secret war," it's to undermine the corruption of the process. The contract is written, as most preferred vendor contracts are, in such a way that at most AWS would have 1-2 competitors which would still not meet the full spec...so AWS (the preferred provider) wins before bidding even begins. Government does this all the time, it's a form of "capture" within the system. Unfortunately Trump has given Bezos cover on a lot of things, simply by criticizing him. Because now if AWS loses the contract people will say Trump intervened or effected the bidding process. Amazon is growing in ways that other companies aren't, and it is unfortunately heavily subsidized by tax dollars, or deferred tax dollars. Example: A recent piece about Amazon negotiating electricity rates, which in the end stiff locals with the brunt of the bill...then there's their corporate welfare rent seeking of HQ2...then there's this contract. They skirt taxes more than average. They treat their floor employees far far worse than Walmart or McDonald's. It's beginning to get a bit ridiculous. If conspiracy theorists want to say Trump is behind the backlash (or a rogue corporation like Oracle,) go for it, but that's not the (full) truth. That's just a cover now, since anything (rightfully in many cases) connected with Trump's criticisms are tainted. Don't fall into that trap, Amazon is beginning to become a troublesome company. I don't know what to do about it, but rewarding them government contracts that are, in the end, rigged to be "no bid" isn't helping. Then on top of that, buying the Amazon line of not using multi-vendor fail overs is baffling. This may be a 10 year contract, but it's built to vendor lock the government.