back to article JEDI mind tricks: Brakes slammed on Pentagon's multibillion cloud deal

A grenade in the form of an updated authorisation bill has been lobbed at the Pentagon's attempt to shift to commercial cloud. A draft of the version of the FY19 National Defense Authorisation Bill (PDF), published on 7 May, has some stern words for the US Secretary of Defense, retired Marine Jim Mattis. Lawmakers in the US …

  1. ratfox

    Oracle lobbying in action?

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

    1. asdf

      Re: Oracle lobbying in action?

      Wouldn't be surprised to suddenly see someone partnered with Boeing who is usually the one to get these Pentagon procurements cancelled mid stream.

    2. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: Oracle lobbying in action?

      And IBM, who got their toes royally stamped on first time round when hosting went to Amazon AWS

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    When the Contract is to be Overwhelming and Almighty, ...

    .... Who/What is Authorised to Sign Up and Sign Off Programs*

    Until Mattis comes up with answers, 50 per cent of the funding will be withheld, making progress on the contract challenging to say the least.

    Challenging to some, exciting to others.

    * A Being Exercising NEUKlearer Vision/A NEUKlearer Vision Exercising Being.

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: When the Contract is to be Overwhelming and Almighty, ...

      What in the name of all that is holy are you on about?

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: When the Contract is to be Overwhelming and Almighty, ... are even Mad Dogs Interested

        What in the name of all that is holy are you on about? .... Lord Elpuss

        The House Armed Services Committee seem to be holding the Department of Defense to ransom for the knowledge which they themselves do not have with regard to secure hosting of unclassified, secret and top secret Defense Department data.

        What a very weird state of internal affairs. Is it IT the American way? .... Give us your crown jewelled proprietary intellectual property/TS/SCI security plans and we bury you in pretty fiat paper for spending?

        Way to go, Uncle Sam. Nice One. What could possibly go wrong? Mattis becoming belligerent? Uncle Sam becoming more bellicose accusing all and sundry with more than shit for brains of being threatening and worthy of embargo and sanctions/virtualised throttling?

        Is that a clone of the ploy which was used for years against Japan and resulted in Pearl Harbour?

        I can't seeing it working very well nowadays, in this age of instant reliable communication between and across worlds ..... especially whenever it so readily highlights all the myriad vital pressure points and vast areas of weakness for attention/attack/exhaustive exploitation. But hey, I'm with Einstein on this one ......."Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

        Fortunately though, there are smarter enabled and enabling beings on the planet with minds and AIMind with Plans and ACTioNs that change things radically and fundamentally ..... and can easily have media going mad denying IT be NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive and Almighty Powerful.

        That's what we on about, Lord Elpuss. Thanks for the opportunity to more clearly explain. It is much appreciated.

        1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

          Re: When the Contract is to be Overwhelming and Almighty, ... are even Mad Dogs Interested

          You were doing so well until the second to last paragraph, when it just went bonkers again. Not sure I agree, but it was coherent up to then. Thanks.

          PS downvote wasn't from me.

          1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

            Re: When the Contract is to be Overwhelming and Almighty, ... are even Mad Dogs Interested

            I'll record that as Spectacular Progress, Lord Elpuss, which is Proving and Improving the Root/Core Future Source.

            So be prepared for Everything Becomes Easier as webs and networks are advised of the true nature of their reality and its existence as a Media Enriched Programme which you can alter with powerful input.

            What's not to like? The latent terror straining at the leash for release? :-) There's a Special Measures Trick to Render that Worry DOA.

  3. Zwuramunga

    It was a offer we couldn't refuse!

    It was on sale and they got free shipping with Amazon Prime!

  4. Mark 85

    .....something that has, understandably, caused much anguish among cloud PORK vendors

    FTFY. The pork it supposed to be spread around, not just given to one company.. <sigh>

    1. Ian Michael Gumby
      Black Helicopters

      @Mark85

      Its not really pork.

      In AWS defense, from the beginning they went and certified how secure their environment can be.

      (Assuming that you're smart enough to turn them on and configure them properly... )

      Not sure where IBM and others are.

      What I don't get is that the US Government could build their own cloud.

  5. John1918

    I can scarcely imagine the number of lobbyists that appeared overnight when Oracle, Microsoft and the rest realized the amount of profit at stake.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not just that

      While they aren't likely to say it publicly, behind closed doors I'm sure they are saying "have you seen what Trump has been saying about Bezos and Amazon? Do you really want to go with them, only to have him break the deal when you are halfway through implementing it because the Washington Post prints something he doesn't like?"

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    No problem!

    > Until Mattis comes up with answers, 50 per cent of the funding will be withheld,

    No doubt the contract price quoted was probably triple the cost of providing the service, there's no problem with carrying right on.

  7. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Meanwhile smoking mushrooms

    Now taking bets on where an attack by "Iranian Assets", complete with passports, will take place in the Homeland, because you gotta justify dat bombing.

    I says it will be the West Coast this time. Seattle has nice skyscrapers.

  8. DerekCurrie
    FAIL

    Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services Is In The News For Breaches And SPAM Sourcing

    I am consistently amazed that my cynicism toward #MyStupidGovernment is never enough to account for its technology illiteracy. I recall the US Navy being extremely tech savvy two decades ago, taking into account real technology security concerns. These days, the level of tech savvy within my government in general as that of any old granny you can find on the street. They're downright oblivious of the consequences of what they're doing. I'm no fan of infamous military waste of money on nonsense. But with something as crucial as military intelligence, where the Chinese had already botted every government computer connected to the Internet by 2007, spend the money to set up a safe and sound DIY cloud system for strictly the military, run by well paid tech savvy IT staff. Making a bozo show out of government security has got to be stamped out permanently.

    1. PM from Hell

      US Navy tech history

      Dont forget an early tech heroine. Grace Hopper. Born in1906 Grace Hopper was a leader in the devlopment of early compilers. Grace had the vision of computers being proggeammed in English rather than strings of machine code. She was highly influential in the development of CODASYL specification for a machine and operating system independent programming language. This lead to the development of COmmon Business Oriented Language. Under the hood the majority of large enterprise legacy systems still have their business rules coded in COBOL. Grace retired from the US Nave as a Rear Admiral.

  9. EveryTime

    This contract has been fought, rebid and back-stabbed for months. Now every defense contractor is pulling out all of the stops, using every dirty trick, and calling in every favor to stop the award to AWS. They don't have anything that can compete, but they see the writing on the wall for their lucrative business if DoD computing is allowed to shift to the cloud.

    1. Zemus

      It's not just hosting. AWS is also displacing future investment in databases, app development tools, and a host of tech worth Billions. That's bad news for Oracle, IBM, HP, and co.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is literally one giant Nutanix deal FYI.

  11. petascalecomputing.com

    JEDI is simply a solicitation of world-class ideas from industry.

    JEDI is simply a solicitation of world-class ideas from industry. The initial Pentagon charter was "to bring your best game". Once industry respondents provide their unique and world-class deliverables, an analysis will be produced to allay media & congressional concerns; but not until then. Conversely, the new financial distribution methodology is analogous to a construction loan draw-schedule and has been in use for 1000's of years to reduce financial risk. Lastly, we're still very early in the game, and the winner has yet to be selected. What everyone should ponder is what worldwide business advantage does Amazon have, and why is the rest of the industry so far behind? Currently, no one can analyze a war, maintain a war, ship a war, and retire a war; at worldwide-scale like Amazon; except for Jack Ma's Alibaba, It's called knowledge at scale(KaS), and translates to stability at scale(SaS), and therefore providing a significant advantage at scale(AaS).

    Amazon's KaS, SaS & AaS takes years; a unique and highly motivational culture, and billions of dollars to achieve (Y:UMC:B). Amazon's YUMCB strategic vision and successful execution are why the industry is in a bit of a "33" jam. (NASA lingo: 3/3 likely to occur, and 3/3 level of damage when it does occur). They've done the quick math; and now they're uncomfortable like putting a quarter in the soda machine that was empty to begin with.

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