The U.S. courts postponed Microsoft’s military cloud contract which would cost $10 billion. Amazon sued in order to stop the project because they believe President Donald Trump’s “bias against the company hurt its chances to win the project” (Associated Press). Microsoft believes that they will be allowed to continue on with the project in the near future. If Amazon ultimately fails to win their case, they will have to pay $42 million for the damages they caused. The name of the project is called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, also known as Jedi. Jedi will be used to “store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the US military to improve communications with soldiers on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities” (Associated Press). President Trump has shown resentment for Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, because he owns the Washington Post which may have been involved with the President’s decision to choose Microsoft.
I believe that Amazon has the right to challenge the president’s decision to give Microsoft the project. The $10 billion payment is too big of a payout for Amazon to not challenge the decision. I do not particularly care about which company receives the contract because I trust that both of them would create an effective product.
This technology is important to the advancement and security of the U.S. military. While I believe Amazon has a right to challenge the decision, I do not appreciate that they are actually fighting it. The longer Amazon spends fighting the decision, the longer it will take for Microsoft to develop the technology. The project has the ability to make our military more advanced and better suited to deal with our enemies overseas.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/13/amazon-war-cloud-pentagon-project-halted-microsoft