Pentagon Scorns Amazon, $10B Job Goes To Microsoft

The New York Times reports:

The Department of Defense on Friday awarded a $10 billion technology contract to Microsoft over Amazon in a contest that was closely watched after President Trump ramped up his criticism of Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, and said he might intervene.

The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, had set off a showdown among Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Google for the right to transform the military’s cloud computing systems. The acrimonious process involved intense lobbying efforts and legal challenges among the rivals.

The decision was a surprise because Amazon had been considered the front-runner, in part because it had built cloud services for the CIA. But that was before Mr. Trump became publicly hostile to Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The president often refers to the newspaper as the “Amazon Washington Post” and has accused it of spreading “fake news.”

As soon as Trump found out Bezos was in line for this payday, this seemed inevitable. Also – one of the most effective outside attack campaigns I’ve ever seen against Amazon. https://t.co/if1MRrJOnS

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) October 25, 2019

I remember in 2017 when I said Trump was getting the DoJ to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger to punish CNN and I was criticized for being some version of hysterical. This is happening folks. In the light of day. Because he gets away with it. https://t.co/Nfxt1ziUsq

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) October 26, 2019

In new book, top Mattis aide said the defense secretary said he’d rather “swallow acid” than see Trump’s military parade, that Trump wanted to “screw” Amazon and that POTUS asked who really cared about Afghanistan. https://t.co/ys1ehyuHvD

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) October 23, 2019