Trump’s Acting DOD Secretary Weighs In On A Cloud Contract That Conservatives Loathe
President Donald Trump’s acting Department of Defense secretary supports a $10 billion winner-take-all cloud computing contract that conservatives are railing against, a DOD spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are jockeying for position to land the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), a program angling to be the largest stand-alone technology contracts the federal government’s ever awarded. The DOD is expected to select a winner for the contract in mid-July, media reports show.
“His position is the same as the DoD position,” said Lt. Colonel Joe Buccino, a Public Affairs Officer who speaks on behalf of DOD Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan. Shanahan is expected to face a tough confirmation hearing next week, and his position on JEDI could roil conservatives who believe it’s a bad idea to unify cloud services into one platform.
It’s become a controversial issue among some Republicans. Reps. Steve Womack of Arkansas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, for instance, requested a probe in October 2018 into the Pentagon’s handling of the deal after TheDCNF reported in August of that year that a former senior adviser to former Secretary of Defense James Mattis once consulted for Amazon Web Services through her firm.
IBM and Oracle, two of Amazon’s competitors in the cloud industry, filed protests in 2018 of the JEDI contract with the Government Accountability Office.
“It has come to our attention through media reports that individuals who held, or hold, high-ranking positions in the Department have access to the specific contractor,” Womack and Cole wrote in a letter at the time to Department of Defense Acting Inspector General Glenn Fine.
Experts in the tech industry questioned why the Pentagon chose to take the winner-take-all route for JEDI rather than following the standard of leveraging multiple cloud providers. Only Amazon and Microsoft hold the necessary certifications for the contract.
Conservative groups are skeptical as well.
“A contract of this magnitude should not be awarded as a sole source contract,” a group of conservative groups wrote in a May 16th letter to Russel Vought, the acting director for the Office of Managing and Budget. Citizens Against Government Waste, The American Conservative Union, and The Taxpayers Protection Alliance were among a handful of groups to sign the letter.
They added: “The use of multiple cloud solutions follows industry-wide best practices utilized by most Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Hodgkins (Trey Hodgkins of IT Alliance for Public Sector) noted that by using multiple providers, the cybersecurity and functionality of the JEDI system would be improved, costs would decrease through increased competition.”
Shanahan is likely to get some push back as he works on becoming the Secretary of DOD. Two of the Democrats on the panel interviewing him – Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York – are running against Trump in 2020, meaning they will be looking for viral moments to exploit during the confirmation hearing.
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Some things can and should be contracted out; this is not one of them. Nor should the microchips and other sensitive, critical components used in aircraft, all navigation systems, targeting radars, etc be purchased from our potential enemies. Can you imagine the outcome if the English had bought their bowstrings from the French before Agincourt? The small savings now are not worth the eventual cost.