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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#171

Post by Bajeezus »

stevehawk wrote: post #36
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…

the entire IC uses AWS. They have their own private AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/

The IC has been backing away from AWS exclusivity even before this contract. The NSA and CIA shifted some of their budget and awarded MSFT a cloud contract.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#172

Post by tozeur »

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…

Politics? Amazon already serves the CIA so that probably wouldn’t be a con. 10B is a massive contract.

Ask Frank Underwood says: When the tits are that big, everybody gets in line.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#174

Post by polysemous »

40acres wrote: post #161

Interesting. If I remember correctly when the contract was initially made public there was a lot of critism as it seemed tailor made for Amazon. Microsoft has pulled a great coup but I have to wonder -- President Trump has brought up this contract in his critism of Amazon and Bezos, was this move political?

The guy in charge of the award bowed out two days ago...

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#175

Post by nkozyra »

delecti wrote: post #98
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that weird?

It was kinda a whole todo the last time some people tried to secede from the Union. It's weird to think it's a good idea to try again.

It was a whole todo for myriad reasons at a particularly fragile time for the union.

I think it's weird to reject the idea out of hand in 2019. Practically, I doubt there'd be much difference between living in Texas in 2019 and living there one year after independence.

As globalism increases in the wake of colonialism, I actually think this could be a very positive thing. Empires and consolidated power are a problem. Tribalism is a problem. Nationalism is a problem.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#176

Post by philsnow »

ethbro wrote: post #103
mstade wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This show felt like so many other shows on American TV in the last decade: somebody had the core of a good idea, but the writers had no idea how to turn that into a show.

The first couple episodes of Jericho were tantalizing. The interesting part was the world and the geopolitical situation, but then so little about that actually changed over the course of the following episodes, it was just a bunch of small town politics and side stories among a few uncompelling characters.

I'll catch hell for this, but Battlestar Galactica was the same way. The mini-series and the first episode of season one are a completely different animal from the rest of the show. The rest of the show was just the writers releasing dribs and drabs of what the Cylons actually were and actually were planning, among a bunch of side stories between characters (okay these were more compelling characters for the most part, though largely unsympathetic).

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#177

Post by Aperocky »

vmurthy wrote: post #58
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…

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”.

Really? Why would a foreign country trust a firm deeply engrained with the US military?

Then again, there are only a few military in the world that need this kind of service, and those countries are highly unlikely to go with foreign entities as provider.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#178

Post by zucker42 »

metaphor wrote: post #110
zucker42 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure; that's part of the reason I was asking. I do think, however, that a 12 year timeline seems too long for any project. Usually people can't work effectively toward goals that far in the future. But maybe this contract is more of an extended support contract?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#180

Post by look_lookatme »

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.

This is an overstatement.

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