Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#51

Post by meddlepal » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #37

rshnotsecure wrote: post #26

Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA. The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay f…

> Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country.

Don't get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I've met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#52

Post by ArtWomb » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

Somewhat related to the ancillary debates around DoD contracting. A very well written longread "In Defense of the War on Terror"

I'm certainly in no position to validate its truth claims. But in the current climate. With Google withdrawing its bid at behest of its employees. Protests at AWS conferences over involvement with ICE. Peter Thiel arguing Silicon Valley companies should "do more" in the form of defense partnerships. And given the historical roots of the Valley. It helps to stay deeply informed and philosophically consistent in figuring out where you stand ;)

https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/25/in-defense-of-the-war-on...

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#53

Post by alexeldeib » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

zachberger wrote: post #40

svnpenn wrote: post #4

Article is pay only.

Is it? After you hit your number of free articles for the month, then yes.

This has happened to me multiple times on the HN front page today. I try the web links -- no luck. What's the point of having these articles on HN, if the more of them there are, the fewer people can read and discuss them without paying?

It's antithetical to open discussion and analysis.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#54

Post by hos234 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

Eclyps wrote: post #20

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

About 65% of all porn video streaming is on Azure media services. Robust as hell. So should be easy to support all those drone army feeds.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#55

Post by randiantech » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #30

foob4r wrote: post #5

I wonder how azure employees feel about this.

Former Microsoftie here. I imagine there will be a lot of unrest inside the company about this, and I think things are about to get tricky for Nadella. Up until now he's been largely able to be above a lot of the labor disputes that have been roiling the other FAANGs recently, but that's mostly out of luck: Microsoft's business doesn't involve arbitrating culture war disputes on social media or search reuslts, nor em…

Its not Trump DoD. Its US DoD.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#56

Post by tanilama » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #35

tanilama wrote: post #22

Owning Post seems to cost Bezos quite a fortune.

Just speculation, but I'm thinking, just like with New York, Bezos and Amazon are happy to be rid of JEDI. Too much politics for 10 bill in revenue easily made up elsewhere in the world. They just seemed to let go of New York and JEDI wayyy too easily for being one of the wealthiest companies in the world. When someone like that bows out of such large projects so easily, something's off. And I have to take it at face…

10 Billion is quite a lot. And government contract is very stable income.

But I got your point on politics, that is something pretty unpredictable.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#57

Post by Mountain_Skies » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #30

foob4r wrote: post #5

I wonder how azure employees feel about this.

Former Microsoftie here. I imagine there will be a lot of unrest inside the company about this, and I think things are about to get tricky for Nadella. Up until now he's been largely able to be above a lot of the labor disputes that have been roiling the other FAANGs recently, but that's mostly out of luck: Microsoft's business doesn't involve arbitrating culture war disputes on social media or search reuslts, nor em…

How is "Trump's DOD" different from Obama's DOD?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#58

Post by vmurthy » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

hannibalhorn wrote: post #41

Eclyps wrote: post #20

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

$1B/year is quite a bit, would have been 4% of AWS's business. I suspect it will positively impact Azure more but havn't paid much attention to their numbers. Not that it's relevant, but I actually signed up with Azure a couple months ago just to build an open source project on a cloud copy of Windows 10 with Visual Studio. I still ran into a bunch of problems with licensing type stuff, and wound up getting calls & e…

The monetary benefit is one big thing but in the B2B scheme of things , a big success story like this would be very easy to convince other government organisations and government in other countries to adopt Azure if they haven’t moved to the cloud already. It’s the new “No one ever got fired for suggesting IBM”.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#59

Post by hannibalhorn » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

statguy wrote: post #49

hannibalhorn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1B/year is quite a bit, would have been 4% of AWS's business. I suspect it will positively impact Azure more but havn't paid much attention to their numbers. Not that it's relevant, but I actually signed up with Azure a couple months ago just to build an open source project on a cloud copy of Windows 10 with Visual Studio. I still ran into a bunch of problems with licensing type stuff, and wound up getting calls & e…

AWS revenue in Q3 2019 was $9B, so it would be about 4% of AWS's business in terms of revenue.

Ah, I remembered the $8.x B last quarter, but for some reason was thinking that was annual. Thanks for actually looking. :-)

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#60

Post by bilbo0s » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #37

rshnotsecure wrote: post #26

Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA. The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay f…

> Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

The separate grid is pretty much purely political.

It may be non-sensical to people outside of Texas, but inside Texas there are a significant number of people who believe in, let's call it, "Independent Texas".

And it would actually make a lot of sense for more states to have completely independent grids. Problem of course, is that most states are far too poor for such an extravagance.