Last Friday saw the Pentagon announce that the Department of Defense had been seeking limited requests for bids for a new initiative. This initiative would see private firms bidding for a new cloud program that would help replace the decade-long Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure- with a contract that was billed at $10 billion.
The US Military then called for the four largest providers of cloud services in the country- namely Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and Google to bid for the spots on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract- which has been deemed quite controversial- and could be the successor to the JEDI.
Pentagon Sets out Contract for big tech companies
The latter contract was then stalled by the Pentagon, and subsequently canceled after a flurry of lawsuits and protests from major tech companies surfaced- especially from those that had won spots on the contract. The last award for the contract of JWCC will be coming around April 2022.
A spokesperson from Amazon reportedly spoke about their commitment to support the military of the nation- while ensuring that the warfighters, as well as the defense partners, had state-of-the-art technology for the best value provided. The email further highlighted that the conglomerate was quite excited to support the modernization efforts of the DoD- which would also look towards building solutions that could help in dealing with critical missions.
Nicolas Chaillan, the former chief of software at the Pentagon, recently revealed that the capabilities of cyber defense in quite a few government departments stood at a kindergarten level. He also went on to resign in protest against the languid pace of technological transformation that took place in the US military- stating that this failure would put the country at major risk.
The former software chief at the Pentagon believes that there is no way the USA would be able to compete with China at its current strength.
