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Why was Amazon heading to court to challenge the US Department of Defense's decision to award its $10bn winner-takes-all JEDI IT project to Microsoft rather than to, well, AWS?
“We’re in the middle of an act of litigation so there’s a limited amount I can say about it, but … we feel pretty strongly that it was not adjudicated fairly,” said Jassy. “If you do a truly objective and detailed apples to apples comparison of the platforms you don’t end up in the spot where that decision was made.
“Most of our customers tell us that we’re a couple of years ahead both with regard to functionality and maturity. I think we ended up with a situation where there was significant political interference.” Jassy claimed that having “a sitting president who’s willing to share openly his disdain for a company,” namely the Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon, makes it “really difficult for government agencies including the DoD to make an objective decision without fear of reprisal.”
Bezos also owns The Washington Post, which has drawn Trump's ire in the past, as well as Amazon.
Does Jassy have a point or is this just sour grapes?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:16AM (3 children)
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
What is a factor for contractors that isn't a factor for either uniformed personnel or civil servants is profit margins and sheer graft. One way potential military contractors make more money is by dreaming up new pork projects that look good to a bunch of top brass - whether these new pork projects actually help win any battles is basically immaterial for the exercise. And for projects like that, there's frequently an understanding between the company that thought of the idea and the procurement officers they've decided are usefully pliable to reduce the odds of competitive bidding on the project. In short, it becomes a pipeline of money from government coffers to the shareholders of the favorite contracting companies.
The incredibly over-simplified math here: The defense contracting industry reported ~$80 billion in profits last year. That's money going from taxes into the pockets of shareholders. And it's enough to pay the salaries of approximately 1 million uniformed service members at current rates.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @05:23PM (2 children)
The contracts are budgeted by the govt who also writes up the requirements.
Tell me how eliminating contractors from the equation fixes this. Get rid of them, and you will still have bloated budgets and crazy requirements.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @07:26PM (1 child)
3 things go away with the elimination of the contractors:
- An army of salespeople whose sole job is to butter up the government people and convince them to buy more stuff.
- A lot of shareholders who get nice dividends and/or capital gains increases on the taxpayer dime.
- A whole management structure whose job is to push their army of salespeople to sell more stuff.
Yes, government people agree to the terms of every contract. That doesn't mean they really wrote those contracts any more than Congresscritters actually writing the bills they propose.
I don't think it fixes everything, but I wouldn't be surprised if government bureaucratic bloat was less expensive than contractor bloat where a bunch of people are specifically incentivized to maximize said bloat.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @07:57PM
The way it works is the military wants "capability" (usually new, or advertised as new) in some area.
This year, it's cyber security. Then they decide how big a chunk they will push Congress to give them. Congress wants to bring home the bacon to their constituents, so they are all for spending if they have contractors or military bases in their home district.
In no way is this process primarily the result of private industry salesmanship.
The govt WANTS to spend money. Having a large budget is POWER in a bureaucracy.