Yahoo Finance Bezos strikes back against Trump as Amazon appeal JEDI 'war-cloud' contract snub
Amazon has said it will appeal the Trump administration’s award of a $10bn cloud computing contract to its closest rival Microsoft due to ‘unmistakable bias’.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, is a US Department of Defense’s contract that is set to modernise the division’s disparate cloud infrastructure.
It was initially believed that the contract was ‘gift-wrapped’ for Amazon Web Services, the dominant leader in the cloud computing market. But in October, the DoD made the surprising decision to award the contract to Microsoft.
This was following President Donald Trump’s vow to “take a very strong look” at the bidding process in July after “tremendous complaints from other companies”. The process was subsequently paused the following month.
The decision to award the JEDI contract to Amazon’s closest rival lead to accusations that Trump’s open feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was the main reason for the company being snubbed. A speechwriter for former Defense secretary General John Mattis alleges that Trump personally asked Mattis to ‘screw Amazon’ out of the contract.
“AWS [Amazon’s cloud computing service] is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the US military needs, and remains committed to supporting the Department of Defence’s modernisation efforts,” AWS said in a statement.
“We also believe it's critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence. Numerous aspects of the Jedi evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”
According to The Federal Times, AWS boss Andy Jassy was videoed at an Amazon meeting saying he wanted to ‘shine a light’ on the process.
“I think when you have a sitting president who’s willing to publicly show his disdain for a company and the leader of a company, it’s very difficult for government agencies including the DoD to make an objective decision without fear of reprisal,” Jassy said.
Bezos has frequently been the target of President Trump’s ire, calling the Bezos-owned Washington Post as ‘fake news’ and saying that Amazon is on an ‘uneven playing field’.
US defense secretary Mark Esper -who recused himself from the JEDI process in - has rejected any suggestions of bias in the awardance of the contract.
“I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly, without any type of outside influence,” Esper told a press conference in Seoul, South Korea.
