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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

701 points by aaronbrethorst 7y ago

dcdevito 7y ago
Fuck paywalls. New York Slimes
jeffwass 7y ago
The key point in the briefing (and the “developing” article is fairly brief) is that Amazon was considered the front-runner for contract, but Trump has a personal vendetta against Amazon/Bezos and also made comments that he’d get personally involved in the JEDI decision (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure). So of course this invites the question of whether petty politics influenced a $10B govt deal.
- ListenLinda 7y ago
  I haven’t done any research but I wonder if trump has it in for Amazon since they have a monopoly that so far hasn’t been challenged much.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > I wonder if trump has it in for Amazon since they have a monopoly that so far hasn’t been challenged much. Trump rather openly has it in for Jeff Bezos because of the existence of WaPo, which has spilled over into attacks on Amazon more than once before.
    - mikeyouse 7y ago
      Our president is a very public with his wild complaints there's no need to wonder why things happen: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1084627451983073280?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10846274519830732... > "So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!" https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-spites-jeff-bezos-hits-pause-on-10-billion-amazon-pentagon-contract https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-spites-jeff-be... > "Trump has privately bemoaned the windfall the Pentagon’s upgrade could represent for Amazon and Bezos, the New York Times reported Thursday, and has also raised questions about the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal in comments to the press. “They’re saying it wasn’t competitively bid,” Trump said in mid-July. “Great companies are complaining about it, so we’re going to take a look at it.”
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I don't think he cares about any issue of monopoly. It has much more to do with negative coverage of Trump in the Washington Post. It appears Bezos has a very hands-off approach in terms of editorial direction there, but Trump still blames him for the coverage.
- ImprovedSilence 7y ago
  Whether petty politics influenced it or not, I bet Amazon sues, and just drags out the award even longer.
- soniman 7y ago
  If Amazon losing this deal makes US oligarchs think twice about getting involved in politics, it's probably a good thing.
  - Grazester 7y ago
    Isn't the Washington Post(and in turn Bezos) that Trump has an issue?
    - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      What was Bezos motive for purchasing the Washington Post? It certainly wasn't financial.
      - p0rkbelly 7y ago
        Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments. Buying the Washington Post certainly forced the world around him to see him as political...even if he considers himself not.
        serf 7y ago
        > Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments. You never considered the idea that the richest man in the world may be political? It'd be more surprising for me to find out that he wasn't political; you don't accrue that kind of cash without playing political games at at least some point in your portfolio -- even if it's just for the opportunity to reduce your tax burdens.
        p0rkbelly 7y ago
        Oh, I think he's political. I think he carefully tried not appearing that way though. My point is, I don't think he bought the Post to be political or political reasons. I think he bought The Post because he's a rich collector of nice/novel/rare things..and it seemed like a fun hobby. At the time. If someone wanted to sell me The Post or let's say WSJ for what I consider pocket change, I would most certainly be interested. Good journalism is something that is going away, but, the obscenely rich can curate and prop up.
- mxcrossb 7y ago
  Was this info not in the original article? It seems to be the most important point, yet nobody else is discussing it in the comments.
  - dlgeek 7y ago
    No. It just had the announcement and was only a paragraph long with a "This is a developing story, more to come soon" at the bottom."
  - jmckib 7y ago
    I was also wondering why it's not being discussed much. It could be because HN is mostly non-political, although when I see political discussions come up there is a noticeable Republican slant.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Here? This site has a decisive leftist slant, with barely a few dissenting opinions that are always immediately downvoted into oblivion. If you think this site has a Republican slant, your own political perspective must be very badly skewed.
svnpenn 7y ago
Article is pay only.
- TrinaryWorksToo 7y ago
  If you mash the "esc" key just as the article loads, and continue tapping it you can read it in its entirety.
  - haack 7y ago
    I'm really surprised this works. Do you know if that's by design?
    - jacques_chester 7y ago
      It's not. Pressing the escape key stops Javascript from running.
- mcny 7y ago
  > This is a developing story and will be updated. Developing story. There are just two paragraphs in the article so far. I can copy paste it here if you'd like but archive.fo is probably more authoritative (should be done archiving in a minute) https://archive.fo/ASobP https://archive.fo/ASobP
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  Yea, I really fail to see the point of linking to something that is inaccessible.
- greenyoda 7y ago
  Selectively disabling JavaScript and/or cookies using a browser add-on such as uMatrix will get you around the NYT's paywall and many others. (Some paywalls you can get around just by going into Reader View in Firefox.)
- thrill 7y ago
  I cleared my cookies and it let me read it.
foob4r 7y ago
I wonder how azure employees feel about this.
- pinewurst 7y ago
  Probably really good as many/most are stockholders too. I know I do.
- meddlepal 7y ago
  Very excited!
- tozeur 7y ago
  I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?
  - hackingthenews 7y ago
    What about the fact that privacy is becoming a thing of the past?
    - pinewurst 7y ago
      I fear Google and Facebook far more than the US Army. I fail to see how rehosting ancient military logistics and business systems translates to a Lojack up our collective derrieres.
  - vkou 7y ago
    I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes. If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures. Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same time, insisting on spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
whb07 7y ago
“Dear MSFT, enjoy the gift xoxo, Oracle”
- reilly3000 7y ago
  I'm sure they are a problem child, but can Oracle really afford to lose more big customers? I feel like they are pretty universally reviled, but I am inside the HN bubble. They have done nothing to woo developers and everything to exploit IT management and public budgets AFAIK.
  - fmajid 7y ago
    Believe me, the corporate world that actually used Oracle database software (unlike the open-source friendly web company employees over represented in HN) hates Oracle even more with a passion, having actually experienced their racketeering license practices first hand. Oracle and IBM are engaged in a race for irrelevance.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anilshanbhag 7y ago
A key ammo that Microsoft has to get customers to its cloud is their Windows and Office 365 franchise. It is likely like many traditional companies Pentagon wanted to move their mail, storage, powerpoint/excel/word, etc to this cloud rather than use lambda or other hot features that AWS has.
- jonknee 7y ago
  This contract has nothing to do with Office 365.
  - slenk 7y ago
    But the integration between the two helps...
    - p0rkbelly 7y ago
      What does my word processor have to do with my GPU cluster I use for creating ML models?
      - Cyph0n 7y ago
        Did you not install the Word add-in that offloads building the table of references to a GPU cluster?
        p0rkbelly 7y ago
        unfortunately, my excel spreadsheet crashes at 2,147,483,647 rows :(
      - mattkrause 7y ago
        Presumably it makes something like this easier: http://www.deepexcel.net/ http://www.deepexcel.net/
      - slenk 7y ago
        I meant for things like audit logs based on your account for every single thing you do.
vkaku 7y ago
It's good to have competition in the cloud space. Amazon already has two government regions, I guess (1 US and 1 CN). Can someone confirm if these are already operational?
- rswail 7y ago
  AWS CN regions (there are two) aren't "government" regions, they are "China" regions. https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ China's government makes companies store Chinese data in China and under different privacy and security laws than other nations. In particular, China makes companies enter into joint ventures with a Chinese company and comply with laws related to CCP oversight. (Not saying I agree, just stating the facts). It's the same as Apple's iCloud for China being under the control of a joint venture company based in China. https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208351 AWS's "gov" cloud is a seperate set of regions in the US that are specifically for US government and contractor use and accounts in those regions are separated from the rest of AWS's infrastructure. https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/
  - mrep 7y ago
    In addition to govcloud, they have 2 entire air gapped (network isolated which is why you cannot see them) regions for the US government, 1 for secret data and 1 for top secret data.
Zaheer 7y ago
Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/1999639/ https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.
- zucker42 7y ago
  From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?
  - Darkphibre 7y ago
    Maybe it's for anticipated platform changes as the landscape of the battlefield changes?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - anarazel 7y ago
    I have no knowledge specific to this case, but it's pretty common for military hardware to have future capability upgrades scheduled for many years out. Which will then also need to be tested. It seems to make sense to have people with pre-existing knowledge do that - thus a longer term contract seems to make sense.
  - metaphor 7y ago
    > The effort includes the test article configuration, the test article build, the test plan, the testing itself, and teardown and analysis. Curiously, how long do you think it should take and at what cost?
    - zucker42 7y ago
      I'm not sure; that's part of the reason I was asking. I do think, however, that a 12 year timeline seems too long for any project. Usually people can't work effectively toward goals that far in the future. But maybe this contract is more of an extended support contract?
Eclyps 7y ago
There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?
- Retric 7y ago
  Azure is a little under 1/2 the size of AWS in terms of revenue, and growing a little faster.
  - p0rkbelly 7y ago
    Azure revenue includes O365 revenue though.
    - Bajeezus 7y ago
      We don't know Azure's exact size, but half revenue is the best analyst estimate available. Counting O365, MS cloud revenue exceeds Amazon's
    - solidasparagus 7y ago
      I'm looking at their earning reports and that does not appear to be the case any more.
      - p0rkbelly 7y ago
        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-earnings-trounce-expectations-as-quarterly-profit-tops-10-billion-2019-10-23 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-earnings-trounce... "Microsoft said that its “Intelligent Cloud” segment recorded revenue of $10.8 billion, higher than the average analyst estimate of $10.42 billion. Microsoft said that Azure grew by 59%; the company does not break out Azure revenue nor operating income specifically, as Amazon does with AWS." I'm sure Azure is a strong business, but, if they wanted to brag about it, why wouldn't they would break out those numbers? Intelligent cloud includes Azure + 0365 + other stuff. Google does this with GCP as well. They report Google Docs/Gmail/G Suite + GCP +other combined.
_bxg1 7y ago
The Space Force is really ramping up
tanilama 7y ago
Owning Post seems to cost Bezos quite a fortune.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Just speculation, but I'm thinking, just like with New York, Bezos and Amazon are happy to be rid of JEDI. Too much politics for 10 bill in revenue easily made up elsewhere in the world. They just seemed to let go of New York and JEDI wayyy too easily for being one of the wealthiest companies in the world. When someone like that bows out of such large projects so easily, something's off. And I have to take it at face value that they maybe just want revenue and not politics. Because no other reasons seem to present themselves here.
  - tanilama 7y ago
    10 Billion is quite a lot. And government contract is very stable income. But I got your point on politics, that is something pretty unpredictable.
    - p0rkbelly 7y ago
      It is for sure a lot. AWS wants it. Everyone wants it. But, it is a maximum of $10Billion ...over 10 years. Th at is the key thing to focus on. I'm sure both companies have private sector customers right now that pay a quarter to half-billion a year right now. I think the greater damage is optics vs financial..and optics can cost a lot. Let's say AWS makes $30-Billion this year. So, losing $1-billion this year is 3.33%? (Though I'm sure the contract starts not this year?)...How much will AWS be making in 10 years?
      - gzer0 7y ago
        It's not only about the $10 billion. Microsoft has essentially cemented being the cloud provider for the Pentagon for the foreseeable future. Once all of the pentagon is integrated with Azure, after the 10 years are up, it will be very unlikely for Pentagon to want to switch, not only due to costs, but everyone will have been trained specifically for handling Azure. This gives Microsoft a massive lead in terms of government infrastructure and all but guarantees we'll be seeing more and more contracts handed to Azure.
rshnotsecure 7y ago
Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA. The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay for the NSA. Additionally, and the FBI chose San Antonio for a significant presence as well because of this, is Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. Also San Antonio has something like 4 military bases. Ft. Sam Houston where the Army medics train, Lackland Air Force Base (home of cybercommand for the Air Force), Kelley Air Force Base, and perhaps even 1 or 2 I can’t recall. 120 minutes to the north is the recently established Army Futures Command in Austin, along with Ft. Hood in Killeen, the Army’s largest base in the world. AWS does not currently have a data center in Texas, which has always frustrated the Texas government. They did establish a shipping center in San Marcos, but even GCO is building out in Dallas where IBM Cloud has a data center, and Oracle Cloud has an Austin data center.
- stevehawk 7y ago
  the entire IC uses AWS. They have their own private AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/
  - Bajeezus 7y ago
    The IC has been backing away from AWS exclusivity even before this contract. The NSA and CIA shifted some of their budget and awarded MSFT a cloud contract.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  > Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-its-own-power-grid.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...
ktta 7y ago
If nothing, this will prevent AWS pulling out much further ahead in the cloud computing space. Wondering if its Jeff Bezos v. Trump or the Office 365 possibility that did it (my bet is on O365)
xref 7y ago
Wow what a course change. For the last couple years there have been articles on HN about how the JEDI requirements were written to specifically exclude Microsoft/ibm/gcp because the DoD preferred AWS so its selection was a forgone conclusion. Also coverage of the resulting lawsuits by those companies over the very aws-tailored “requirements”
- eaguyhn 7y ago
  When I saw this article I figured it would go to MS. https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-of-defense-to-look-into-10-billion-jedi-contract-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-of-defense-to-look-into-...
- mr_toad 7y ago
  If it was a political decision in the first place it shouldn’t be surprising that they’ve flip flopped. Politics is fickle.
- Havoc 7y ago
  That was also my impression. Good to see that both were viable contenders though
- mtberatwork 7y ago
  > Also coverage of the resulting lawsuits I doubt this is the end. I'm assuming AWS will seek litigation given the circumstances.
z3t4 7y ago
What do the military need 10 billion US dollars in cloud computing for ? Are they going to fork Bitcoin? DDOS attack? If they are for example going to archive video footage, it's probably much cheaper to print it to film.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- darktimesahead 7y ago
  Real-time surveillance of the world. Who said what when where to whom. Was that a threat. What were the consequences. Feeds for video, sound, https streams from billions of Internet devices. ML to extract salient features, at multiple levels of resolution. $10B is a drop in the bucket. This is heading into trillions territory. I wouldn't be surprised that in 10 years half the Pentagon budget will be spent on the cloud. We can glimpse a world-wide stack-ranking system: "Echelon [0], who are the 1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position and what will be their whereabouts today?". "Matrix [1], please dispose of these individuals at these locations". Let's pray there will still be some humans between step 0 and step 1. Worse, by the logic of MAD, it is possible we are going to end up with 2 such systems, one for USA and one for China, caught in a new cold war. Think distributed Vietnam. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    distributed Vietnam lmao. I think most of your description is coming form a high-ranking general's wet dream though. When it comes to actual engineering, it would be between the simple solution that works - or complex solution that doesn't work. Having worked in a predictive analytics role before, I can guarantee that '1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position' would consist of 500 innocent villagers, 30 kids playing around and 1 hospital.
    - 7952 7y ago
ArtWomb 7y ago
Somewhat related to the ancillary debates around DoD contracting. A very well written longread "In Defense of the War on Terror" I'm certainly in no position to validate its truth claims. But in the current climate. With Google withdrawing its bid at behest of its employees. Protests at AWS conferences over involvement with ICE. Peter Thiel arguing Silicon Valley companies should "do more" in the form of defense partnerships. And given the historical roots of the Valley. It helps to stay deeply informed and philosophically consistent in figuring out where you stand ;) https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/25/in-defense-of-the-war-on-terror-a-response-to-ben-burgis/ https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/25/in-defense-of-the-war-on...
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Mr Church is entitled to his opinion but I take issue with two of his points. As far as his list of Al Qaeda heavies killed by strikes goes, it had become even a staple of late night comedy routines at that point that the newest "Al Qaeda No 2" had been blown up. It felt like the military was writing the press releases for Stars and Stripes and distributing them to everyone. And with regard to his link about the Muslim Brotherhood and settlement and civilizational jihad, the last I heard about Hizb ut-Tahrir in America they were trying to buy some 40 acre dairy farm in Wisconsin and failing miserably (no word about any mules)
- sjg007 7y ago
  SV companies should do more if they want a seat at the table. Otherwise defense contractors will pick up the slack.
quaquaqua1 7y ago
Given the choice between Cadillac and Pontiac, the Pentagon chose....
- p0rkbelly 7y ago
  Pontiac Aztec
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    I drove a family member's Aztek for a few years back in the day, and it was never a particularly nice vehicle, but its primary problem was simply being ahead of its time before the current crossover mania really took hold.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
Although $10B might not seem like much in terms of revenue for the cloud companies (that statement feels weird writing), it is potentially worth a lot more. The DoD drives a lot of the US economy and a lot of companies have DoD contracts. This win, gives Microsoft an advantage n trying to get these companies on Azure and solidifies Windows and Office 365 positions at these companies. The follow on effects will likely be worth many multiples of this contract.
- judge2020 7y ago
  Ya I don't see them moving their entire infrastructure out of Azure in 10 years unless they use kubernetes/other extremely portable software for nearly everything.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Hoping it also ups Microsoft's game on Azure Functions, monitoring, etc. AWS needs a reason to be scared.
  - bnt 7y ago
    Azure Functions are pretty nice, hope they continue evolving the service.
    - LordN00b 7y ago
      As long as they fix the blasted runtime. Azure Functions has it's own dll loader, and other complexities that means it doesn't place nice with .net or the larger ecosystem. Currently it does not support .net 3, and I can't even use the most recent version of System.Data.SqlClient. I like functions it was a good move, but the 'not-quite-.net' keeps getting in the way.
      - tyingq 7y ago
        That's exactly what I meant by "up their game" and well stated.
    - 7y ago
w0m 7y ago
Well there's that.
exoram 7y ago
?
- p0rkbelly 7y ago
  Amazon is firmly planted in NYC and are hiring thousands upon thousands. They just will sit in Manhattan and not Queens. Also, the contract is going to the largest company in the world now...isn't that just "same same"?
peterwwillis 7y ago
....why just one provider, anyway?
DKnoll 7y ago
> ...unlike, say, New York City or Detroit, whose residents found out the hard way that lots of their power comes from Canada. Interesting that this myth is still alive. It started with Bush falsely claiming the 2003 blackout was Canada's fault before an investigation had even been done. Here is the actual postmortem report. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Just a request: if you intend to directly refute another's comment by posting sources, posting a 238 page document without a specific page reference isn't really helpful.
  - DKnoll 7y ago
    Refer to the summary of causes on page 17, as seen in the table of contents.
    - mminer237 7y ago
      Here's a direct link to that page: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf#page=25 https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...
  - dmak 7y ago
    It's called burying the opponent in papers. I watch Suits, so I know how this works.
    - DKnoll 7y ago
      I wouldn't call sending truckloads of boxes of paperwork during discovery to opposing counsel and linking a 238-page PDF with a good ToC and summary equivalent, but I guess the internet has robbed a lot of people of basic research skills.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Trump and his administration have already publicly admitted they are willing to use the power of government money for purely political ends. Dollars to donuts there will be an investigation into this contract.
- ploxolo 7y ago
  Must have missed it. Actually, this contract was tailored for AWS so it is refreshing to see it go this way
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    Here you go then: From the president's transcript of the call with Zelensky: > The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me. From Mulvaney's press conference where he described an exact quid pro quo and then tells reporters to get over it (search for "But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo."): https://www.rev.com/blog/mick-mulvaney-briefing-transcript-get-over-it-regarding-ukraine-quid-pro-quo https://www.rev.com/blog/mick-mulvaney-briefing-transcript-g...
topkai22 7y ago
Great news for Microsoft, but I hope they don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog. There is a reason that you don’t see many companies straddling the defense/civilian divide that much- the military’s crazy bureaucracy, Legal, contracting, and certification environment means that organizations that work with them often end changing their culture to suit the government, and those cultural changes make them less competitive in non-public sector arenas.
- Bajeezus 7y ago
  Microsoft has had a variety of government contracts, and even government clouds, for a long time. Not sure this will create much of a difference in culture.
  - topkai22 7y ago
    It's a matter of type and scale. If an org is selling commodity products to DoD as like 5% of annual revenue, it's very different than 30% as part of suite including services.
    - wangyjx 7y ago
      errrh, Microsoft has more than 130B revenue each year. 10 B in 10 years is less than 1% each year.
cromwellian 7y ago
At least it wasn't Oracle. You can't say Azure, AWS, GCP, et al, aren't highly skilled, experienced, cloud infrastructure builders. There was a lot of wining-and-dining of the Trump administration by Safra Kat which gave the impression they'd be magically awarded the contract. Thank goodness the government isn't that corrupt.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I think it would be quite fitting for Oracle to be awarded the contract. The culture of these 2 organization would be compatible from the start.
- blazespin 7y ago
  Maybe Safra Kat wanted MSFT to win. Look at recent deal making..
kd3 7y ago
Taking government money is taking blood money. I'm glad I'm on a trajectory of getting rid of Microsoft tech in my life.
- curiousDog 7y ago
  I hope you’ll still pay your taxes though!
  - kd3 7y ago
    I don't pay taxes. I get extorted by the government.
- Transfinity 7y ago
  I love the sentiment, but where else would you turn? AWS takes money from the CIA, Google has drones and Dragonfly, and Oracle doesn't even pretend to be a bastion of freedom.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Dragonfly, right, like it's already launched.
  - kd3 7y ago
    Unfortunately in that regard there is little to no choice. This is why I continue to advocate building a truly peer 2 peer network with all services relying on that infrastructure instead of centralized systems in the hands of a few companies. Everything running and stored on that P2P network. It's coming but taking longer than I'd hope for.
gumby 7y ago
Single supplier has worked out so well for the pentagon so far it’s a relief they did this for cloud computing too. In fact they’ve worked so hard to reduce competition in major suppliers (e.g. aircraft manufacturer consolidation, ULA) I imagine they’ll want to do the same in computing. /s
kerng 7y ago
Azure has evolved into a mature cloud provider, definently not a bad decision. Although, a bit unusual as we typically see the "noone ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality usually. It shows that Azure is moving up to challenge AWS's throne. Interesting times to come!
SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
Does anyone else think it's disappointing that an organisation as evil as the Pentagon used the acronym JEDI? Perhaps this proposal should have been called Synchronised Information Technology Holdings.
- rosybox 7y ago
  > an organisation as evil as the Pentagon Given your feelings about the US Military, you probably also don't like the police. The Jedi order were a law enforcement organization, a police force. I'm not sure you would have liked them much if you were living in the Star Wars universe.
  - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
    It's not just the US military I don't like, it's all militaries. I can't say I'm supportive of any organisation which has the killing of human beings as a core function. Especially the modern incarnation of war, which is mainly waged against much weaker, non-threatening opponents for profit. I would not align myself with the Jedi or the Sith, if I were lucky enough to be living in the Star Wars universe. I'd rather be a trader in some far flung system, quietly going about my business and exploring the universe.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  The Pentagon is not evil, from my point of view the JEDI are evil.
40acres 7y ago
Interesting. If I remember correctly when the contract was initially made public there was a lot of critism as it seemed tailor made for Amazon. Microsoft has pulled a great coup but I have to wonder -- President Trump has brought up this contract in his critism of Amazon and Bezos, was this move political?
- polysemous 7y ago
  The guy in charge of the award bowed out two days ago...
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    This definitely sound like political pressure. But maybe Amazon dodged a bullet here, Microsoft employees would have many tales to tell about how their government customer users and their requirements onto Microsoft itself. Assuming this decision stays.
    - mrep 7y ago
      AWS already has 2 entire air gapped regions dedicated to the US government so they are already stuck in that hell hole.
      - Aperocky 7y ago
        Yes, but a smaller hell hole is easier to deal with.
thewismit 7y ago
Interesting
polysemous 7y ago
Very interesting that the guy in the pentagon in charge of the choice bows out two days before the Microsoft award. Possible trump influence?
samirillian 7y ago
I wonder how much dirt Microsoft did on the dl to get that contract. Backdooring ElectionGuard?
seagullz 7y ago
Partly explains why Bill Gates characterizes Edward Snowden the way he does (though he might not have the same judgment for someone like James Clapper who lied to congress) https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-says-snowden-is-no-hero/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-says-snowden-is...
- lokeshk 7y ago
  How does this 2014 article by an ex boss of Microsoft, who hasn’t been involved in any day to day activities of it for more than a decade, explain this contract in 2019?
bsharitt 7y ago
Not terribly surprised to see Microsoft win given the Trump administration's feelings toward Amazon and the DoD coziness towards Microsoft. I'm just happy those poor bastards in the DoD don't have to deal with Oracle. I know if I were still working in the DoD sphere, I'd be looking for somewhere new to go if Oracle won.
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crb002 7y ago
Could be an albatross for Microsoft. Amazon not having control over wired munitions is goodwill outside the US, and especially outside NATO.
jhallenworld 7y ago
Never mind AWS vs. Azure: I'm thinking that this is very bad news for IBM. If there was one customer they could get, this would be it..
- abledon 7y ago
  let the blight be purged from this world
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pkz 7y ago
For a lot of people the thinking will go "ah DoD uses Azure so it is safe to put pur own valuable stuff there". But is the DoD contract actually using the same Azure infrastructure as everyone else or is it running on a physically separated Azure platform with staff w security clearance?
- jsploit 7y ago
  Separate infrastructure restricted to TS/SCI w/ poly.
  - valleyjo 7y ago
    True. Underlying tech is the same though.
- mrep 7y ago
  They will almost certainly build entirely new regions that are air gapped and just for them. AWS already has 2 air gapped regions for the sole use of the US government.
ganitarashid 7y ago
It’s embarrassing that something as vital as the military is running on Windows. Boggles the mind
- Nemo_bis 7y ago
  Snowden's "Permanent record" has some stories on this.
- Avalaxy 7y ago
  Ehhh, what does Azure have to do with Windows? You can run Linux VMs just fine.
  - MikusR 7y ago
    But those run on top of Windows.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/L1TBx http://archive.is/L1TBx
freakynit 7y ago
So, did someone just do the same to amazon what amazon has been doing to small businesses?
Ice_cream_suit 7y ago
Pork wins every time...
phil9987 7y ago
"Google dropped out last October without submitting a formal bid, saying the military work conflicted with its corporate principles, which preclude the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry." <3
- jrcii 7y ago
  Microsoft: hold my beer.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Thanks for acknowledging this. They did the right thing at least in my eyes.
- Rainymood 7y ago
  Only after their employees revolted. Never forget this. Only after the employees spoke up.
  - steve_musk 7y ago
    What point are you trying to make? The employees make up the company.
    - baobabKoodaa 7y ago
      That any perceived moral fibre in Google should be attributed to its rank and file, rather than its leadership?
  - wolco 7y ago
    What do we make of the remaining bidders? aws.. the employees would be fired if they revolted. Microsoft the employees didn't care to revolt. The fact that google employees could revolt and change a big decision says something. Tons of stories on why google is evil and microsoft and amazon are the toast of the town. I would rather have google in that position vs amazon/microsoft/oracle because there is a soul and heart at the core of google. The core of Microsoft is different same with Amazon.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
I'll bite: do you think this was on merits alone? On one hand, if there was pressure whistle-blowers would be whistling by now but still, I think Amazon was hurt by WaPost (Bezos owns WP and Trump is not happy with them). Maybe "they" tilted the process in such a way that one can't really complain. After all Microsoft is no slouch.
netcan 7y ago
Assuming "you-are-what-you-eat" dynamics, what sort of impact on msft do >10,000 workers on mother-of-all-enterprise projects have.
philshem 7y ago
Silver lining, ignoring politics, this will strengthen services from Azure and create a better overall market for cloud. 3 > 2
known 7y ago
The other day Bank of America saved $2 billion/year by rolling out their own cloud. Why isn't Pentagon saving tax payers money?
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  Because the Pentagon (and the rest of the federal government) can't match FAANG salaries so they don't get very many good engineers.
indigodaddy 7y ago
Amazon will likely be suing, yeah?
sehugg 7y ago
In a book slated for publication Oct. 29, retired Navy commander Guy Snodgrass, who served as a speech writer to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, said Trump called Mattis and directed him to “screw Amazon” by preventing it from bidding on the JEDI contract, according to an excerpt of the book seen by Reuters ahead of its release. “Were not going to do that,” Mattis later told other Pentagon officials, according to the excerpt. “This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/reuters-america-update-5-microsoft-beats-amazon-for-pentagons-10-bln-cloud-computing-contract.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/reuters-america-update-5-mic... Mattis resigned December 2018, his successor put Amazon's contract up for review in August.
- jki275 7y ago
  Not sure what you mean by “put Amazon’s contract up for review” - the contract didn’t belong to Amazon, there have been multiple ethical issues with Amazon related to this contract, and there was an ongoing protest from Oracle.
mk89 7y ago
To me it sounds clearly like a political move. Technically it's nonsense. I hope now Azure invests that money to actually offer a decent cloud service that can compete with Amazon.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Or maybe build a descent operating system that doesn't keep infringing on consumer privacy
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thatiscool 7y ago
people jumped up and down about Huawei's connection to china's government/military. now no one gives a darn word about Microsoft's tie with the military?
adultSwim 7y ago
SkyNET 1.0

Fuck paywalls. New York Slimes

The key point in the briefing (and the “developing” article is fairly brief) is that Amazon was considered the front-runner for contract, but Trump has a personal vendetta against Amazon/Bezos and also made comments that he’d get personally involved in the JEDI decision (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure). So of course this invites the question of whether petty politics influenced a $10B govt deal.

ListenLinda 7y ago
I haven’t done any research but I wonder if trump has it in for Amazon since they have a monopoly that so far hasn’t been challenged much.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I wonder if trump has it in for Amazon since they have a monopoly that so far hasn’t been challenged much. Trump rather openly has it in for Jeff Bezos because of the existence of WaPo, which has spilled over into attacks on Amazon more than once before.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Our president is a very public with his wild complaints there's no need to wonder why things happen: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1084627451983073280?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10846274519830732... > "So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!" https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-spites-jeff-bezos-hits-pause-on-10-billion-amazon-pentagon-contract https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-spites-jeff-be... > "Trump has privately bemoaned the windfall the Pentagon’s upgrade could represent for Amazon and Bezos, the New York Times reported Thursday, and has also raised questions about the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal in comments to the press. “They’re saying it wasn’t competitively bid,” Trump said in mid-July. “Great companies are complaining about it, so we’re going to take a look at it.”
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I don't think he cares about any issue of monopoly. It has much more to do with negative coverage of Trump in the Washington Post. It appears Bezos has a very hands-off approach in terms of editorial direction there, but Trump still blames him for the coverage.
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Whether petty politics influenced it or not, I bet Amazon sues, and just drags out the award even longer.
soniman 7y ago
If Amazon losing this deal makes US oligarchs think twice about getting involved in politics, it's probably a good thing.
- Grazester 7y ago
  Isn't the Washington Post(and in turn Bezos) that Trump has an issue?
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    What was Bezos motive for purchasing the Washington Post? It certainly wasn't financial.
    - p0rkbelly 7y ago
      Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments. Buying the Washington Post certainly forced the world around him to see him as political...even if he considers himself not.
      - serf 7y ago
        > Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments. You never considered the idea that the richest man in the world may be political? It'd be more surprising for me to find out that he wasn't political; you don't accrue that kind of cash without playing political games at at least some point in your portfolio -- even if it's just for the opportunity to reduce your tax burdens.
        p0rkbelly 7y ago
        Oh, I think he's political. I think he carefully tried not appearing that way though. My point is, I don't think he bought the Post to be political or political reasons. I think he bought The Post because he's a rich collector of nice/novel/rare things..and it seemed like a fun hobby. At the time. If someone wanted to sell me The Post or let's say WSJ for what I consider pocket change, I would most certainly be interested. Good journalism is something that is going away, but, the obscenely rich can curate and prop up.
mxcrossb 7y ago
Was this info not in the original article? It seems to be the most important point, yet nobody else is discussing it in the comments.
- dlgeek 7y ago
  No. It just had the announcement and was only a paragraph long with a "This is a developing story, more to come soon" at the bottom."
- jmckib 7y ago
  I was also wondering why it's not being discussed much. It could be because HN is mostly non-political, although when I see political discussions come up there is a noticeable Republican slant.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Here? This site has a decisive leftist slant, with barely a few dissenting opinions that are always immediately downvoted into oblivion. If you think this site has a Republican slant, your own political perspective must be very badly skewed.

svnpenn 7y ago

Article is pay only.

TrinaryWorksToo 7y ago
If you mash the "esc" key just as the article loads, and continue tapping it you can read it in its entirety.
- haack 7y ago
  I'm really surprised this works. Do you know if that's by design?
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    It's not. Pressing the escape key stops Javascript from running.
mcny 7y ago
> This is a developing story and will be updated. Developing story. There are just two paragraphs in the article so far. I can copy paste it here if you'd like but archive.fo is probably more authoritative (should be done archiving in a minute) https://archive.fo/ASobP https://archive.fo/ASobP
TACIXAT 7y ago
Yea, I really fail to see the point of linking to something that is inaccessible.
greenyoda 7y ago
Selectively disabling JavaScript and/or cookies using a browser add-on such as uMatrix will get you around the NYT's paywall and many others. (Some paywalls you can get around just by going into Reader View in Firefox.)
thrill 7y ago
I cleared my cookies and it let me read it.

foob4r 7y ago

I wonder how azure employees feel about this.

pinewurst 7y ago
Probably really good as many/most are stockholders too. I know I do.
meddlepal 7y ago
Very excited!
tozeur 7y ago
I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?
- hackingthenews 7y ago
  What about the fact that privacy is becoming a thing of the past?
  - pinewurst 7y ago
    I fear Google and Facebook far more than the US Army. I fail to see how rehosting ancient military logistics and business systems translates to a Lojack up our collective derrieres.
- vkou 7y ago
  I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes. If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures. Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same time, insisting on spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

whb07 7y ago

“Dear MSFT, enjoy the gift xoxo, Oracle”

reilly3000 7y ago
I'm sure they are a problem child, but can Oracle really afford to lose more big customers? I feel like they are pretty universally reviled, but I am inside the HN bubble. They have done nothing to woo developers and everything to exploit IT management and public budgets AFAIK.
- fmajid 7y ago
  Believe me, the corporate world that actually used Oracle database software (unlike the open-source friendly web company employees over represented in HN) hates Oracle even more with a passion, having actually experienced their racketeering license practices first hand. Oracle and IBM are engaged in a race for irrelevance.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anilshanbhag 7y ago

A key ammo that Microsoft has to get customers to its cloud is their Windows and Office 365 franchise. It is likely like many traditional companies Pentagon wanted to move their mail, storage, powerpoint/excel/word, etc to this cloud rather than use lambda or other hot features that AWS has.

jonknee 7y ago
This contract has nothing to do with Office 365.
- slenk 7y ago
  But the integration between the two helps...
  - p0rkbelly 7y ago
    What does my word processor have to do with my GPU cluster I use for creating ML models?
    - Cyph0n 7y ago
      Did you not install the Word add-in that offloads building the table of references to a GPU cluster?
      - p0rkbelly 7y ago
        unfortunately, my excel spreadsheet crashes at 2,147,483,647 rows :(
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      Presumably it makes something like this easier: http://www.deepexcel.net/ http://www.deepexcel.net/
    - slenk 7y ago
      I meant for things like audit logs based on your account for every single thing you do.

vkaku 7y ago

It's good to have competition in the cloud space. Amazon already has two government regions, I guess (1 US and 1 CN). Can someone confirm if these are already operational?

rswail 7y ago
AWS CN regions (there are two) aren't "government" regions, they are "China" regions. https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/ China's government makes companies store Chinese data in China and under different privacy and security laws than other nations. In particular, China makes companies enter into joint ventures with a Chinese company and comply with laws related to CCP oversight. (Not saying I agree, just stating the facts). It's the same as Apple's iCloud for China being under the control of a joint venture company based in China. https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208351 AWS's "gov" cloud is a seperate set of regions in the US that are specifically for US government and contractor use and accounts in those regions are separated from the rest of AWS's infrastructure. https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/
- mrep 7y ago
  In addition to govcloud, they have 2 entire air gapped (network isolated which is why you cannot see them) regions for the US government, 1 for secret data and 1 for top secret data.

Zaheer 7y ago

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/1999639/ https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

zucker42 7y ago
From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  Maybe it's for anticipated platform changes as the landscape of the battlefield changes?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- anarazel 7y ago
  I have no knowledge specific to this case, but it's pretty common for military hardware to have future capability upgrades scheduled for many years out. Which will then also need to be tested. It seems to make sense to have people with pre-existing knowledge do that - thus a longer term contract seems to make sense.
- metaphor 7y ago
  > The effort includes the test article configuration, the test article build, the test plan, the testing itself, and teardown and analysis. Curiously, how long do you think it should take and at what cost?
  - zucker42 7y ago
    I'm not sure; that's part of the reason I was asking. I do think, however, that a 12 year timeline seems too long for any project. Usually people can't work effectively toward goals that far in the future. But maybe this contract is more of an extended support contract?

Eclyps 7y ago

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

Retric 7y ago
Azure is a little under 1/2 the size of AWS in terms of revenue, and growing a little faster.
- p0rkbelly 7y ago
  Azure revenue includes O365 revenue though.
  - Bajeezus 7y ago
    We don't know Azure's exact size, but half revenue is the best analyst estimate available. Counting O365, MS cloud revenue exceeds Amazon's
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    I'm looking at their earning reports and that does not appear to be the case any more.
    - p0rkbelly 7y ago
      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-earnings-trounce-expectations-as-quarterly-profit-tops-10-billion-2019-10-23 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-earnings-trounce... "Microsoft said that its “Intelligent Cloud” segment recorded revenue of $10.8 billion, higher than the average analyst estimate of $10.42 billion. Microsoft said that Azure grew by 59%; the company does not break out Azure revenue nor operating income specifically, as Amazon does with AWS." I'm sure Azure is a strong business, but, if they wanted to brag about it, why wouldn't they would break out those numbers? Intelligent cloud includes Azure + 0365 + other stuff. Google does this with GCP as well. They report Google Docs/Gmail/G Suite + GCP +other combined.

_bxg1 7y ago

The Space Force is really ramping up

tanilama 7y ago

Owning Post seems to cost Bezos quite a fortune.

bilbo0s 7y ago
Just speculation, but I'm thinking, just like with New York, Bezos and Amazon are happy to be rid of JEDI. Too much politics for 10 bill in revenue easily made up elsewhere in the world. They just seemed to let go of New York and JEDI wayyy too easily for being one of the wealthiest companies in the world. When someone like that bows out of such large projects so easily, something's off. And I have to take it at face value that they maybe just want revenue and not politics. Because no other reasons seem to present themselves here.
- tanilama 7y ago
  10 Billion is quite a lot. And government contract is very stable income. But I got your point on politics, that is something pretty unpredictable.
  - p0rkbelly 7y ago
    It is for sure a lot. AWS wants it. Everyone wants it. But, it is a maximum of $10Billion ...over 10 years. Th at is the key thing to focus on. I'm sure both companies have private sector customers right now that pay a quarter to half-billion a year right now. I think the greater damage is optics vs financial..and optics can cost a lot. Let's say AWS makes $30-Billion this year. So, losing $1-billion this year is 3.33%? (Though I'm sure the contract starts not this year?)...How much will AWS be making in 10 years?
    - gzer0 7y ago
      It's not only about the $10 billion. Microsoft has essentially cemented being the cloud provider for the Pentagon for the foreseeable future. Once all of the pentagon is integrated with Azure, after the 10 years are up, it will be very unlikely for Pentagon to want to switch, not only due to costs, but everyone will have been trained specifically for handling Azure. This gives Microsoft a massive lead in terms of government infrastructure and all but guarantees we'll be seeing more and more contracts handed to Azure.

rshnotsecure 7y ago

Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA. The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay for the NSA. Additionally, and the FBI chose San Antonio for a significant presence as well because of this, is Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. Also San Antonio has something like 4 military bases. Ft. Sam Houston where the Army medics train, Lackland Air Force Base (home of cybercommand for the Air Force), Kelley Air Force Base, and perhaps even 1 or 2 I can’t recall. 120 minutes to the north is the recently established Army Futures Command in Austin, along with Ft. Hood in Killeen, the Army’s largest base in the world. AWS does not currently have a data center in Texas, which has always frustrated the Texas government. They did establish a shipping center in San Marcos, but even GCO is building out in Dallas where IBM Cloud has a data center, and Oracle Cloud has an Austin data center.

stevehawk 7y ago
the entire IC uses AWS. They have their own private AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/
- Bajeezus 7y ago
  The IC has been backing away from AWS exclusivity even before this contract. The NSA and CIA shifted some of their budget and awarded MSFT a cloud contract.
gtirloni 7y ago
> Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-its-own-power-grid.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

ktta 7y ago

If nothing, this will prevent AWS pulling out much further ahead in the cloud computing space. Wondering if its Jeff Bezos v. Trump or the Office 365 possibility that did it (my bet is on O365)

xref 7y ago

Wow what a course change. For the last couple years there have been articles on HN about how the JEDI requirements were written to specifically exclude Microsoft/ibm/gcp because the DoD preferred AWS so its selection was a forgone conclusion. Also coverage of the resulting lawsuits by those companies over the very aws-tailored “requirements”

eaguyhn 7y ago
When I saw this article I figured it would go to MS. https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-of-defense-to-look-into-10-billion-jedi-contract-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-of-defense-to-look-into-...
mr_toad 7y ago
If it was a political decision in the first place it shouldn’t be surprising that they’ve flip flopped. Politics is fickle.
Havoc 7y ago
That was also my impression. Good to see that both were viable contenders though
mtberatwork 7y ago
> Also coverage of the resulting lawsuits I doubt this is the end. I'm assuming AWS will seek litigation given the circumstances.

z3t4 7y ago

What do the military need 10 billion US dollars in cloud computing for ? Are they going to fork Bitcoin? DDOS attack? If they are for example going to archive video footage, it's probably much cheaper to print it to film.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
darktimesahead 7y ago
Real-time surveillance of the world. Who said what when where to whom. Was that a threat. What were the consequences. Feeds for video, sound, https streams from billions of Internet devices. ML to extract salient features, at multiple levels of resolution. $10B is a drop in the bucket. This is heading into trillions territory. I wouldn't be surprised that in 10 years half the Pentagon budget will be spent on the cloud. We can glimpse a world-wide stack-ranking system: "Echelon [0], who are the 1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position and what will be their whereabouts today?". "Matrix [1], please dispose of these individuals at these locations". Let's pray there will still be some humans between step 0 and step 1. Worse, by the logic of MAD, it is possible we are going to end up with 2 such systems, one for USA and one for China, caught in a new cold war. Think distributed Vietnam. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
- Aperocky 7y ago
  distributed Vietnam lmao. I think most of your description is coming form a high-ranking general's wet dream though. When it comes to actual engineering, it would be between the simple solution that works - or complex solution that doesn't work. Having worked in a predictive analytics role before, I can guarantee that '1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position' would consist of 500 innocent villagers, 30 kids playing around and 1 hospital.
  - 7952 7y ago

ArtWomb 7y ago

Somewhat related to the ancillary debates around DoD contracting. A very well written longread "In Defense of the War on Terror" I'm certainly in no position to validate its truth claims. But in the current climate. With Google withdrawing its bid at behest of its employees. Protests at AWS conferences over involvement with ICE. Peter Thiel arguing Silicon Valley companies should "do more" in the form of defense partnerships. And given the historical roots of the Valley. It helps to stay deeply informed and philosophically consistent in figuring out where you stand ;) https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/25/in-defense-of-the-war-on-terror-a-response-to-ben-burgis/ https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/25/in-defense-of-the-war-on...

selimthegrim 7y ago
Mr Church is entitled to his opinion but I take issue with two of his points. As far as his list of Al Qaeda heavies killed by strikes goes, it had become even a staple of late night comedy routines at that point that the newest "Al Qaeda No 2" had been blown up. It felt like the military was writing the press releases for Stars and Stripes and distributing them to everyone. And with regard to his link about the Muslim Brotherhood and settlement and civilizational jihad, the last I heard about Hizb ut-Tahrir in America they were trying to buy some 40 acre dairy farm in Wisconsin and failing miserably (no word about any mules)
sjg007 7y ago
SV companies should do more if they want a seat at the table. Otherwise defense contractors will pick up the slack.

quaquaqua1 7y ago

Given the choice between Cadillac and Pontiac, the Pentagon chose....

p0rkbelly 7y ago
Pontiac Aztec
- Marsymars 7y ago
  I drove a family member's Aztek for a few years back in the day, and it was never a particularly nice vehicle, but its primary problem was simply being ahead of its time before the current crossover mania really took hold.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

Although $10B might not seem like much in terms of revenue for the cloud companies (that statement feels weird writing), it is potentially worth a lot more. The DoD drives a lot of the US economy and a lot of companies have DoD contracts. This win, gives Microsoft an advantage n trying to get these companies on Azure and solidifies Windows and Office 365 positions at these companies. The follow on effects will likely be worth many multiples of this contract.

judge2020 7y ago
Ya I don't see them moving their entire infrastructure out of Azure in 10 years unless they use kubernetes/other extremely portable software for nearly everything.
tyingq 7y ago
Hoping it also ups Microsoft's game on Azure Functions, monitoring, etc. AWS needs a reason to be scared.
- bnt 7y ago
  Azure Functions are pretty nice, hope they continue evolving the service.
  - LordN00b 7y ago
    As long as they fix the blasted runtime. Azure Functions has it's own dll loader, and other complexities that means it doesn't place nice with .net or the larger ecosystem. Currently it does not support .net 3, and I can't even use the most recent version of System.Data.SqlClient. I like functions it was a good move, but the 'not-quite-.net' keeps getting in the way.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      That's exactly what I meant by "up their game" and well stated.
  - 7y ago

w0m 7y ago

Well there's that.

exoram 7y ago

p0rkbelly 7y ago
Amazon is firmly planted in NYC and are hiring thousands upon thousands. They just will sit in Manhattan and not Queens. Also, the contract is going to the largest company in the world now...isn't that just "same same"?

peterwwillis 7y ago

....why just one provider, anyway?

DKnoll 7y ago

> ...unlike, say, New York City or Detroit, whose residents found out the hard way that lots of their power comes from Canada. Interesting that this myth is still alive. It started with Bush falsely claiming the 2003 blackout was Canada's fault before an investigation had even been done. Here is the actual postmortem report. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Just a request: if you intend to directly refute another's comment by posting sources, posting a 238 page document without a specific page reference isn't really helpful.
- DKnoll 7y ago
  Refer to the summary of causes on page 17, as seen in the table of contents.
  - mminer237 7y ago
    Here's a direct link to that page: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf#page=25 https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...
- dmak 7y ago
  It's called burying the opponent in papers. I watch Suits, so I know how this works.
  - DKnoll 7y ago
    I wouldn't call sending truckloads of boxes of paperwork during discovery to opposing counsel and linking a 238-page PDF with a good ToC and summary equivalent, but I guess the internet has robbed a lot of people of basic research skills.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

Trump and his administration have already publicly admitted they are willing to use the power of government money for purely political ends. Dollars to donuts there will be an investigation into this contract.

ploxolo 7y ago
Must have missed it. Actually, this contract was tailored for AWS so it is refreshing to see it go this way
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Here you go then: From the president's transcript of the call with Zelensky: > The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me. From Mulvaney's press conference where he described an exact quid pro quo and then tells reporters to get over it (search for "But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo."): https://www.rev.com/blog/mick-mulvaney-briefing-transcript-get-over-it-regarding-ukraine-quid-pro-quo https://www.rev.com/blog/mick-mulvaney-briefing-transcript-g...

topkai22 7y ago

Great news for Microsoft, but I hope they don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog. There is a reason that you don’t see many companies straddling the defense/civilian divide that much- the military’s crazy bureaucracy, Legal, contracting, and certification environment means that organizations that work with them often end changing their culture to suit the government, and those cultural changes make them less competitive in non-public sector arenas.

Bajeezus 7y ago
Microsoft has had a variety of government contracts, and even government clouds, for a long time. Not sure this will create much of a difference in culture.
- topkai22 7y ago
  It's a matter of type and scale. If an org is selling commodity products to DoD as like 5% of annual revenue, it's very different than 30% as part of suite including services.
  - wangyjx 7y ago
    errrh, Microsoft has more than 130B revenue each year. 10 B in 10 years is less than 1% each year.

cromwellian 7y ago

At least it wasn't Oracle. You can't say Azure, AWS, GCP, et al, aren't highly skilled, experienced, cloud infrastructure builders. There was a lot of wining-and-dining of the Trump administration by Safra Kat which gave the impression they'd be magically awarded the contract. Thank goodness the government isn't that corrupt.

Aperocky 7y ago
I think it would be quite fitting for Oracle to be awarded the contract. The culture of these 2 organization would be compatible from the start.
blazespin 7y ago
Maybe Safra Kat wanted MSFT to win. Look at recent deal making..

kd3 7y ago

Taking government money is taking blood money. I'm glad I'm on a trajectory of getting rid of Microsoft tech in my life.

curiousDog 7y ago
I hope you’ll still pay your taxes though!
- kd3 7y ago
  I don't pay taxes. I get extorted by the government.
Transfinity 7y ago
I love the sentiment, but where else would you turn? AWS takes money from the CIA, Google has drones and Dragonfly, and Oracle doesn't even pretend to be a bastion of freedom.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Dragonfly, right, like it's already launched.
- kd3 7y ago
  Unfortunately in that regard there is little to no choice. This is why I continue to advocate building a truly peer 2 peer network with all services relying on that infrastructure instead of centralized systems in the hands of a few companies. Everything running and stored on that P2P network. It's coming but taking longer than I'd hope for.

gumby 7y ago

Single supplier has worked out so well for the pentagon so far it’s a relief they did this for cloud computing too. In fact they’ve worked so hard to reduce competition in major suppliers (e.g. aircraft manufacturer consolidation, ULA) I imagine they’ll want to do the same in computing. /s

kerng 7y ago

Azure has evolved into a mature cloud provider, definently not a bad decision. Although, a bit unusual as we typically see the "noone ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality usually. It shows that Azure is moving up to challenge AWS's throne. Interesting times to come!

SturgeonsLaw 7y ago

Does anyone else think it's disappointing that an organisation as evil as the Pentagon used the acronym JEDI? Perhaps this proposal should have been called Synchronised Information Technology Holdings.

rosybox 7y ago
> an organisation as evil as the Pentagon Given your feelings about the US Military, you probably also don't like the police. The Jedi order were a law enforcement organization, a police force. I'm not sure you would have liked them much if you were living in the Star Wars universe.
- SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
  It's not just the US military I don't like, it's all militaries. I can't say I'm supportive of any organisation which has the killing of human beings as a core function. Especially the modern incarnation of war, which is mainly waged against much weaker, non-threatening opponents for profit. I would not align myself with the Jedi or the Sith, if I were lucky enough to be living in the Star Wars universe. I'd rather be a trader in some far flung system, quietly going about my business and exploring the universe.
Aperocky 7y ago
The Pentagon is not evil, from my point of view the JEDI are evil.

40acres 7y ago

Interesting. If I remember correctly when the contract was initially made public there was a lot of critism as it seemed tailor made for Amazon. Microsoft has pulled a great coup but I have to wonder -- President Trump has brought up this contract in his critism of Amazon and Bezos, was this move political?

polysemous 7y ago
The guy in charge of the award bowed out two days ago...
- Aperocky 7y ago
  This definitely sound like political pressure. But maybe Amazon dodged a bullet here, Microsoft employees would have many tales to tell about how their government customer users and their requirements onto Microsoft itself. Assuming this decision stays.
  - mrep 7y ago
    AWS already has 2 entire air gapped regions dedicated to the US government so they are already stuck in that hell hole.
    - Aperocky 7y ago
      Yes, but a smaller hell hole is easier to deal with.

thewismit 7y ago

Interesting

polysemous 7y ago

Very interesting that the guy in the pentagon in charge of the choice bows out two days before the Microsoft award. Possible trump influence?

samirillian 7y ago

I wonder how much dirt Microsoft did on the dl to get that contract. Backdooring ElectionGuard?

seagullz 7y ago

Partly explains why Bill Gates characterizes Edward Snowden the way he does (though he might not have the same judgment for someone like James Clapper who lied to congress) https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-says-snowden-is-no-hero/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-says-snowden-is...

lokeshk 7y ago
How does this 2014 article by an ex boss of Microsoft, who hasn’t been involved in any day to day activities of it for more than a decade, explain this contract in 2019?

bsharitt 7y ago

Not terribly surprised to see Microsoft win given the Trump administration's feelings toward Amazon and the DoD coziness towards Microsoft. I'm just happy those poor bastards in the DoD don't have to deal with Oracle. I know if I were still working in the DoD sphere, I'd be looking for somewhere new to go if Oracle won.

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crb002 7y ago

Could be an albatross for Microsoft. Amazon not having control over wired munitions is goodwill outside the US, and especially outside NATO.

jhallenworld 7y ago

Never mind AWS vs. Azure: I'm thinking that this is very bad news for IBM. If there was one customer they could get, this would be it..

abledon 7y ago
let the blight be purged from this world

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pkz 7y ago

For a lot of people the thinking will go "ah DoD uses Azure so it is safe to put pur own valuable stuff there". But is the DoD contract actually using the same Azure infrastructure as everyone else or is it running on a physically separated Azure platform with staff w security clearance?

jsploit 7y ago
Separate infrastructure restricted to TS/SCI w/ poly.
- valleyjo 7y ago
  True. Underlying tech is the same though.
mrep 7y ago
They will almost certainly build entirely new regions that are air gapped and just for them. AWS already has 2 air gapped regions for the sole use of the US government.

ganitarashid 7y ago

It’s embarrassing that something as vital as the military is running on Windows. Boggles the mind

Nemo_bis 7y ago
Snowden's "Permanent record" has some stories on this.
Avalaxy 7y ago
Ehhh, what does Azure have to do with Windows? You can run Linux VMs just fine.
- MikusR 7y ago
  But those run on top of Windows.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/L1TBx http://archive.is/L1TBx

freakynit 7y ago

So, did someone just do the same to amazon what amazon has been doing to small businesses?

Ice_cream_suit 7y ago

Pork wins every time...

phil9987 7y ago

"Google dropped out last October without submitting a formal bid, saying the military work conflicted with its corporate principles, which preclude the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry." <3

jrcii 7y ago
Microsoft: hold my beer.
mav3rick 7y ago
Thanks for acknowledging this. They did the right thing at least in my eyes.
Rainymood 7y ago
Only after their employees revolted. Never forget this. Only after the employees spoke up.
- steve_musk 7y ago
  What point are you trying to make? The employees make up the company.
  - baobabKoodaa 7y ago
    That any perceived moral fibre in Google should be attributed to its rank and file, rather than its leadership?
- wolco 7y ago
  What do we make of the remaining bidders? aws.. the employees would be fired if they revolted. Microsoft the employees didn't care to revolt. The fact that google employees could revolt and change a big decision says something. Tons of stories on why google is evil and microsoft and amazon are the toast of the town. I would rather have google in that position vs amazon/microsoft/oracle because there is a soul and heart at the core of google. The core of Microsoft is different same with Amazon.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

I'll bite: do you think this was on merits alone? On one hand, if there was pressure whistle-blowers would be whistling by now but still, I think Amazon was hurt by WaPost (Bezos owns WP and Trump is not happy with them). Maybe "they" tilted the process in such a way that one can't really complain. After all Microsoft is no slouch.

netcan 7y ago

Assuming "you-are-what-you-eat" dynamics, what sort of impact on msft do >10,000 workers on mother-of-all-enterprise projects have.

philshem 7y ago

Silver lining, ignoring politics, this will strengthen services from Azure and create a better overall market for cloud. 3 > 2

known 7y ago

The other day Bank of America saved $2 billion/year by rolling out their own cloud. Why isn't Pentagon saving tax payers money?

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
Because the Pentagon (and the rest of the federal government) can't match FAANG salaries so they don't get very many good engineers.

indigodaddy 7y ago

Amazon will likely be suing, yeah?

sehugg 7y ago

In a book slated for publication Oct. 29, retired Navy commander Guy Snodgrass, who served as a speech writer to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, said Trump called Mattis and directed him to “screw Amazon” by preventing it from bidding on the JEDI contract, according to an excerpt of the book seen by Reuters ahead of its release. “Were not going to do that,” Mattis later told other Pentagon officials, according to the excerpt. “This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/reuters-america-update-5-microsoft-beats-amazon-for-pentagons-10-bln-cloud-computing-contract.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/reuters-america-update-5-mic... Mattis resigned December 2018, his successor put Amazon's contract up for review in August.

jki275 7y ago
Not sure what you mean by “put Amazon’s contract up for review” - the contract didn’t belong to Amazon, there have been multiple ethical issues with Amazon related to this contract, and there was an ongoing protest from Oracle.

mk89 7y ago

To me it sounds clearly like a political move. Technically it's nonsense. I hope now Azure invests that money to actually offer a decent cloud service that can compete with Amazon.

techntoke 7y ago
Or maybe build a descent operating system that doesn't keep infringing on consumer privacy

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thatiscool 7y ago

people jumped up and down about Huawei's connection to china's government/military. now no one gives a darn word about Microsoft's tie with the military?

adultSwim 7y ago

SkyNET 1.0