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The government contract was publicly announced on March 31. Government contracts usually take a long time to secure. How is this misleading? Pelosi's husband b

The government contract was publicly announced on March 31. Government contracts usually take a long time to secure. How is this misleading? Pelosi's husband buys an option a year in advance?

tzs 5y ago
The winner of the contract was publicly announced on March 31. It was publicly known that the military was seeking someone to contract with much earlier. I believe they put out their public request for proposals sometime in late 2019 or early 2020. This was after they had done a test VR program in 2018 with Microsoft. It does not take any kind of insider knowledge to figure out that Microsoft is going to probably be the top contender to win when you consider that the system will involve a lot of cloud and other back end services (so Microsoft, Google, or Amazon), Microsoft had already won a big contract over Amazon to provide cloud services to the Pentagon, and that Microsoft already did the 2018 VR test contract which presumably the military was happy enough with to go on and ask for bids for a full system.
- disgrunt 5y ago
  Can you provide any citations to support your assertion that there was no insider knowledge? Such as all this apparent public information regarding this program?
  - tzs 5y ago
    That Microsoft won the 2018 contract to build prototypes of IVAS was mentioned in most stories about the new contract for the production systems. Here's one [1]. That Microsoft won a big contract to provide the military with cloud services in 2019 is also mentioned in that same story, and was all over the news at the time, as was Amazon's suing to try to overturn that contract. It was publicly known that the prototypes were delivered and underwent extensive testing in 2019, and officials said they were anticipating the final product being fields in the fourth quarter of FY21 [2]. They were still undergoing testing in the second half of 2020 [3]. Another thing to note is that the article makes much of Microsoft stock going up 11% from the time the time the stocks were bought to some unspecified time after the contract was announced. But if you look at other tech stocks, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, they all follow about the same patter as Microsoft: from March 19 (when the Pelosis exercised their options) to March 31 (when the contract was announced) they were roughly flat, and then within a few days of the contract being announced were up ~10%. This suggests that the stock movements after the time the options were exercised were because of general movements in tech stocks and had nothing to do with the contract. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-m... [2] https://www.army.mil/article/230034/soldiers_test_new_ivas_technology_capabilities_with_hand_on_exercises https://www.army.mil/article/230034/soldiers_test_new_ivas_t... [3] https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/from-frankengoggle-to-battle-ready-army-ivas/ https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/from-frankengoggle-to-ba...

The government contract was publicly announced on March 31. Government contracts usually take a long time to secure. How is this misleading? Pelosi's husband buys an option a year in advance?

tzs 5y ago

The winner of the contract was publicly announced on March 31. It was publicly known that the military was seeking someone to contract with much earlier. I believe they put out their public request for proposals sometime in late 2019 or early 2020. This was after they had done a test VR program in 2018 with Microsoft. It does not take any kind of insider knowledge to figure out that Microsoft is going to probably be the top contender to win when you consider that the system will involve a lot of cloud and other back end services (so Microsoft, Google, or Amazon), Microsoft had already won a big contract over Amazon to provide cloud services to the Pentagon, and that Microsoft already did the 2018 VR test contract which presumably the military was happy enough with to go on and ask for bids for a full system.

disgrunt 5y ago
Can you provide any citations to support your assertion that there was no insider knowledge? Such as all this apparent public information regarding this program?
- tzs 5y ago
  That Microsoft won the 2018 contract to build prototypes of IVAS was mentioned in most stories about the new contract for the production systems. Here's one [1]. That Microsoft won a big contract to provide the military with cloud services in 2019 is also mentioned in that same story, and was all over the news at the time, as was Amazon's suing to try to overturn that contract. It was publicly known that the prototypes were delivered and underwent extensive testing in 2019, and officials said they were anticipating the final product being fields in the fourth quarter of FY21 [2]. They were still undergoing testing in the second half of 2020 [3]. Another thing to note is that the article makes much of Microsoft stock going up 11% from the time the time the stocks were bought to some unspecified time after the contract was announced. But if you look at other tech stocks, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, they all follow about the same patter as Microsoft: from March 19 (when the Pelosis exercised their options) to March 31 (when the contract was announced) they were roughly flat, and then within a few days of the contract being announced were up ~10%. This suggests that the stock movements after the time the options were exercised were because of general movements in tech stocks and had nothing to do with the contract. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-m... [2] https://www.army.mil/article/230034/soldiers_test_new_ivas_technology_capabilities_with_hand_on_exercises https://www.army.mil/article/230034/soldiers_test_new_ivas_t... [3] https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/from-frankengoggle-to-battle-ready-army-ivas/ https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/from-frankengoggle-to-ba...