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Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

thehill.com

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Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#141

Post by caleb-allen »

zionic wrote: post #59
james-mcelwain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge, gigantic difference between not having a military at all and spending 1 trillion a year to be an imperialist superpower. It's almost like... there's a middle ground.

The thing is, we spend that much and we're not even good imperialists. When was the last time we annexed any territory? Declared a lesser state a protectorate? Or established a new colony? We spend trillions/year to be the world police so our "allies" don't have to while they mock us on twitter.

How about shaping countries like Venezuela, Iran, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, South Korea, Japan, etc etc etc, all in ways (intended to be) economically beneficial to the US?

If you can stage a coup or rile up and train a militia to fight your proxy war, there is no need for an outdated notion of "imperialism".

The US has the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and that power is not simply being tossed into the dumpster.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#142

Post by godelzilla »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #108

It is strange to me that there are even rules about this. Imagine if we decided to halt the Manhattan Project for a few months so the courts could work out whether contracts were properly awarded.

Millions of people might not have died unnecessarily. The horror!

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#143

Post by bduerst »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #110
CrankyBear wrote: post #9

This is standard procedure in these kind of contract fights. I get so sick and tired of government IT contract squabbles. They drag on for years, little usually changes, and, in the meantime the work doesn't get done.

This could be genius if the rates are locked in. 1) Price services at current rates today. 2) Delay usage for 4 years until everything costs half as much. 3) Profit $$$

This is usually factored in by the procurement group though, along with discounts relative to purchasing power.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#144

Post by TallGuyShort »

bduerst wrote: post #140
TallGuyShort wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that seems to 100% be prior party lines anyway.

>Even that seems to 100% be prior party lines anyway. The non-partisan GAO seems to disagree: https://apnews.com/9127109f325778490fd40c5f98be1817

That's somewhat irrelevant to the question of what people's opinions are of the power the president should have though, isn't it. I'm not defending Trump, I'm saying that D's are currently arguing he shouldn't have power that they would be happy to see exercised if it wasn't an R in office.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#145

Post by rzmnzm »

bob1029 wrote: post #93
nova22033 wrote: post #67

Is there an objective case for why Azure is better than AWS?

If you are a purely-Microsoft shop (AD/Exchange/Visual Studio), using Azure could give you better integration within their ecosystem (i.e. native Azure tooling within Visual Studio). I realize AWS has similar tools and plugins, but there is something nice to having first-party support down the entire vertical. Making your Microsoft account rep responsible for everything really does help to consolidate business admini…

As Microsoft is proud to boast, the majority on instances on Azure are Linux based.

The tooling that matters to me (az cli, terraform, vscode, kubectl et all) runs absolutely fine on Azure. I use Linux to create and manage Linux and open source infra on azure every day.

The majority of complaints I hear about azure tend to revolve around their AzureRM templating, which is admittedly terrible, but irrelevant since terraform exists (and cloudformation is not much better imo).

Also a lot of people dont/didn't like their portal. I don't frequently use the portal, and besides have you seen the aws portal? It's woeful.

One benefit of azure is they name their products logically, like "azure virtual machine" instead of "magic beanstalk" or w/e

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#146

Post by j-c-hewitt »

hpoe wrote: post #3

Didn't Oracle just sue the DoD claiming they wrote the requirements in such a way that only Amazon could get it?

The court ruled in favor of the government: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv...

There were some improprieties found as it relates to the conduct of Amazon's agents and in the RFP process, but it got the greenlight overall. This might be the problem with Amazon litigating the changes to the RFP process. Oracle already litigated the previous version of the RFP. It looks like the process changed in part to head off the perception that it was rigged in favor of Amazon. Now, Amazon alleges that this re-rigging made it rigged out of its favor.

So, it went:

Oracle: "This is rigged for Amazon! These requirements can only be met by Amazon! Also it's unfair that it can only be won by a single entity!"

Judge: "The Pentagon didn't want to have multiple clouds because it would defeat the reason for the project. We didn't find that the RFP was corrupt to the point of breaking the law, but it was definitely sort of corrupt, particularly in the case of the dude who was on the committee creating the RFP while simultaneously selling a startup to Amazon while simultaneously telling the Pentagon that he wasn't breaking the law and telling Amazon he was not breaking the law, but he was totally breaking the law."

This obviously put the Pentagon between the rock of leaving the RFP as-is and being sued again for corruption and the hard place of changing the RFP and being accused of improper political influence. If Trump had avoided taking a public stance on the issue it would have been much better for the Pentagon's situation, as this now creates a situation in which no matter what the Pentagon decided they could be credibly accused of corruption.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#147

Post by bduerst »

outside1234 wrote: post #17
robbyt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in this case, the choice of Azure over AWS was due to government corruption, rather than actual technical diligence.

That's not substantiated. There are a lot of reasons that Azure could have won this project, highlighted by the fact that they have decades long relationships in terms of executing on government contracts.

The claim is not substantiated publicly because Amazon's filing is currently under seal. Of course, there are many other possible reasons but those are not substantiated either.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#149

Post by bduerst »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #144
bduerst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even that seems to 100% be prior party lines anyway. The non-partisan GAO seems to disagree: https://apnews.com/9127109f325778490fd40c5f98be1817

That's somewhat irrelevant to the question of what people's opinions are of the power the president should have though, isn't it. I'm not defending Trump, I'm saying that D's are currently arguing he shouldn't have power that they would be happy to see exercised if it wasn't an R in office.

Sure, if this had precedence. Would you say illegal actions taken by the president are relevant to whether they should continue to have power? This is the question that non-partisan people are considering.

Re: Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

#150

Post by buckminster »

robmiller wrote: post #7
hpoe wrote: post #3

Didn't Oracle just sue the DoD claiming they wrote the requirements in such a way that only Amazon could get it?

Wouldn't surprise me. I heard the person who wrote the legislation left when they were completed and took a job with AWS.

The British civil servant who championed the use of AWS by the British government took a job with AWS after the deal was done. It is shameful.
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