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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#101

Post by rgrieselhuber »

techsupporter wrote: post #87
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that weird?

As a native Texan, it's weird for a few reasons: a) Pragmatically, separating from the rest of the United States would be devastating to our economy. Much like the United Kingdom from the EU, but on a much larger scale, because the vast majority of our trade, people, and connectedness come from being part of the U.S. Texans like to trot out the factoid that relatively little land in Texas is owned by the federal gove…

Fair enough, sounds mostly like a matter of opinion, with the exception of point #1, which sounds more like a matter of fiscal priorities that aren't necessarily set in stone.

I'm not a Texan but I do see the rationale behind freedom to associate or not associate with people based on shared values or a lack thereof.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#102

Post by jorvi »

DuskStar wrote: post #86
jorvi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it make sense to have independent grids? In Europe most of our grids are already connected and there are plans to create a supergrid that stretches all the way from Finland down to North Africa (mainly to get connected to the future Saharan solar plants). Usually the bigger the grid the more resilient it is and the less dispersion there is in demand.

Yep, and this is why electrical grid issues never take down entire regions of the US! Like the 2003 Northeast blackout, for instance. [0] Things like that, where an error in one part of the grid cascades into massive issues elsewhere - those don't ever happen. Sometimes, being big is a danger. Even when that's not the case, it can be worth accepting the same risk of each individual point on the map losing power if it…

You can be sarcastic all you want, it doesn't make you right. I never said connecting grids makes them invulnerable, just more resilient. Connecting the EU grids has made them more stable, made electricity cheaper, made energy production more efficient (no more hydro going to waste), etc. etc.

There is indeed risk for cascading failure but it is very rare (how long have the US grids been interconnected vs. how many times has there been a massive, multi-state blackout?) and with EU countries higher attention to infrastructure maintenance the risk is even less.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#103

Post by ethbro »

mstade wrote: post #93
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One if my favorite season finales ever: https://youtu.be/xFgNZG3gmqc The people with this view are also a big and growing minority: https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/blog/texan-first-american-s... > Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 40 percent identify as Texans before they identify as Americans, far outpacing any other age group.

Wait what – they made a second season of Jericho?! You sir just made my day!

Prepare to be disappointed at a season ending cliffhanger... all over again.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#104

Post by tyingq »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #70

Although $10B might not seem like much in terms of revenue for the cloud companies (that statement feels weird writing), it is potentially worth a lot more. The DoD drives a lot of the US economy and a lot of companies have DoD contracts. This win, gives Microsoft an advantage n trying to get these companies on Azure and solidifies Windows and Office 365 positions at these companies. The follow on effects will likely…

Hoping it also ups Microsoft's game on Azure Functions, monitoring, etc. AWS needs a reason to be scared.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#106

Post by slenk »

jonknee wrote: post #67
anilshanbhag wrote: post #14

A key ammo that Microsoft has to get customers to its cloud is their Windows and Office 365 franchise. It is likely like many traditional companies Pentagon wanted to move their mail, storage, powerpoint/excel/word, etc to this cloud rather than use lambda or other hot features that AWS has.

This contract has nothing to do with Office 365.

But the integration between the two helps...

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#107

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

soniman wrote: post #28
jeffwass wrote: post #3

The key point in the briefing (and the “developing” article is fairly brief) is that Amazon was considered the front-runner for contract, but Trump has a personal vendetta against Amazon/Bezos and also made comments that he’d get personally involved in the JEDI decision (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure). So of course this invites the question of whether petty politics influenced a $10B govt deal.

If Amazon losing this deal makes US oligarchs think twice about getting involved in politics, it's probably a good thing.

I can't think of a more ironic statement given that the oligarch named Trump is probably thrilled at this news.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#108

Post by anarazel »

zucker42 wrote: post #42
Zaheer wrote: post #19

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?

I have no knowledge specific to this case, but it's pretty common for military hardware to have future capability upgrades scheduled for many years out. Which will then also need to be tested. It seems to make sense to have people with pre-existing knowledge do that - thus a longer term contract seems to make sense.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#109

Post by DKnoll »

> ...unlike, say, New York City or Detroit, whose residents found out the hard way that lots of their power comes from Canada.

Interesting that this myth is still alive. It started with Bush falsely claiming the 2003 blackout was Canada's fault before an investigation had even been done. Here is the actual postmortem report.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#110

Post by metaphor »

zucker42 wrote: post #42
Zaheer wrote: post #19

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?

> The effort includes the test article configuration, the test article build, the test plan, the testing itself, and teardown and analysis.

Curiously, how long do you think it should take and at what cost?

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