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It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

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111–120 of 156 posts

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#111
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what our current President and his "deep state" wants you to believe. However, after three + years it's pretty obvious that our President has a firm grip on power. He still plays the victim every once in a while. But all the departments are quite clearly bowing and pleasing him as best they can.

I don't know about that, he wasn't able to get the press to play nice on COVID the way it did during swine flu.

In the US the press is not part of the state.

Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons he gives for buying it don't tell us anything. His net worth is in the 12 figures. Everything he says publicly is crafted by a well paid and highly competent PR team. If he bought it to gain political influence, which seems to me the only reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or for any other reason that would put him in a bad light, he would not in a million years come out and say that openly.

No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.

No, failure to control the spigot equates to lack of influence over the output.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#113
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentence seems purpose-build to be so obviously trying to hide the truth as to be giving it away. It means the " DoD personnel who evaluated proposals " were not pressured by senior DoD leaders, but by White House officials directly. Or why would the statement explicitly mention "DoD leaders more senior to them"? If they were not pressured, why not simply say "DoD personnel were not pressured to award..."? And w…

This is the sort of thing I think of when I hear the term "fake news". Sentences that get buried, sentences that get purposefully constructed in order to obscure/misdirect, etc. Personally, I don't care for an article or piece to be "artistic" in any way, they just need to give us facts and explanations, along with all the things they tried to ask, what they investigated, what info they weren't able to find, etc. Jou…

The sentence quoted comes directly from the IG report, not the journalists. Don't blame them for the IG's wording.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that, he wasn't able to get the press to play nice on COVID the way it did during swine flu.

In the US the press is not part of the state. Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.

Slightly off-topic, but if you consider that 90% of "mainstream" media is owned by 6 huge corporations, which are interested in maintaining crony capitalism (of which the state is a central player) - then it would not be completely outlandish to think that the press is kinda part of state (conceptually speaking)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.

No, failure to control the spigot equates to lack of influence over the output.

Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish?

Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#116
post #15

This misses the point. All large DoD contract are usually followed by a lawsuit from the loser. I have seen this happens so many times. If MSFT lost, they would have probably sued.

This comment misses the point. How many other government contracts have the presumed favorite lose after the President made multiple statements saying that he would do everything in his power to screw over the favorite? And AWS losing IS an upset.

I've spent a lot of time around government contracting and this whole bid process was mind-boggling badly handled by the government. The number of conflicts-of-interests involved throughout the process are absurd.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, failure to control the spigot equates to lack of influence over the output.

Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish? Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.

Actually, I do.

You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish? Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.

Actually, I do. You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.

I would offer that the Project Veritas expose of CNN belies your assertion handily.

There is a mindset that dominates academia and carries on into the media.

It is reflected in the political donations of journalists.

And the distribution of the story bias.

It perhaps one should say "stunning lack of anything resembling a distribution".

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish? Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.

Actually, I do. You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.

>Actually, I do.

That is amazing. How did you get all WP employees to agree to let you leave brain scan machines hooked up to them for the past 7 years?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Bezos is handing down fiats. He's an extremely competent executive. That is not the most effective means of getting what you want out of every type of person in every situation. He knows that, and he also knows many alternative ways of influencing behavior.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When JEDI was first proposed, AWS had already been the vast majority of cloud services for the Intelligence community. This led to them having a distinct advantage because they already had the certified infrastructure to handle US Secret and Top Secret information. This was (in my own thoughts) why that immediate capability was stressed so much in the initial request for proposal.

The intelligence community uses SIPRNet or JWICS, not AWS that can be breached by some dev-ops as evidenced by the capital one incident.

In addition to those systems, they use an Amazon-built private cloud.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...

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