[HN Gopher] Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Mi...
___________________________________________________________________
Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microsoft were
fighting over
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-07-06 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| jhickok wrote:
| What a tremendous waste of time and resources for taxpayers--
| nearly 2 years of litigation and all for nothing. Shame on
| everyone involved.
| adrr wrote:
| Compared to what? They lost at most what a few million in
| litigation costs compared the F35 project which is 1.7
| trillion.
| paxys wrote:
| Better to waste a few million in litigation than $10B in
| useless contracts.
| arenaninja wrote:
| This ignores the time value of money. What if the couple of
| years prevents numerous security intrusions by foreign
| entities? It's not as if MSFT doesn't have the expertise or
| the manpower to fulfill the contract
| paxys wrote:
| Considering the DoD themselves say that the terms of the
| contract are outdated and they don't need it anymore, I'd
| trust their decision over random online comments.
| arenaninja wrote:
| The same DoD that has suffered massive leaks over the
| past 15 years and constantly misplaces funds from its
| budget? Not all random online comments are created equal
| the-dude wrote:
| Does not register on the scale of say, your twenty year war.
| johnnyfived wrote:
| What a completely useless and patronizing comment
| pstuart wrote:
| The one that we're trying to slip out the back door and
| pretend never happened?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The state should procure an entirely open source / public domain
| cloud stack that would commeditize the "cloud" space allowing any
| org to run data centers with a standardized interface. The state
| should then run their own data centers in-house with the stock
| design rather than outsourcing those operational costs
|
| This would be far better for society. Compute-for-all.
| jollybean wrote:
| Love the sentiment but 'hosting' at that scale is an incredibly
| complicated thing, way, way beyond most entities ability.
|
| It'd be like the government designing their own ASICs or making
| their own OS.
|
| But the part about avoiding vendor lock-in would seem like an
| appropriate measure.
| adrr wrote:
| Where would they get the talent and expertise to do that? Whats
| the most you can make at government job? $170k? How much money
| do engineers make at AWS? I just had a recruiter call me for
| architect role that was $500k in compensation a year.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Maybe it sounds lame or hokey or whatever but the point of
| working for the government is not to make money it's to
| provide your services for a significant discount for the
| betterment of the population.
|
| Is that how people approach it? Yes some do, and there are
| fantastic people who are working the government in service to
| the nation. Certainly not all and almost never for government
| contractors.
|
| That's the spirit at least. I don't think it's actually
| working unfortunately because trust in government is so low.
| There was a time though...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| For what? The initial design work and a demo deployment can
| be outsourced. After the design is proven then cheaper
| sysadmins can run the thing.
|
| Also, the fact that government jobs are so capped like that
| is a conspiracy to make the public sector suck, basically. We
| should fix that too, but I recognize it cannot be done in
| time, hence allowing that the design work to be outsourced.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem with cleaving contractor deliverables from
| suitability results is that you remove all incentive for
| quality work.
|
| Or in another words, you're trying to find the one honest
| person, in the stack of AccgemloitteBMizantPMGataBCS
| proposals. And everyone else is bidding with the profit
| expectation of tossing entry-level, over-hyped developers
| on it, and then crossing their fingers nothing goes wrong.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > AccgemloitteBMizantPMGataBCS
|
| hahaha
|
| -----
|
| I am trying to structure the contract to avoid this
| stuff, by making the deliverables include both the
| contractors running their own working deployment, and the
| government also running their own. For the latter, there
| should be a tech transfer period where the contracter
| needs to do training and promptly answer questions, and
| then a government independence period where the
| contractor is _not_ allowed to intervene at all to prove
| the knowledge has _actually_ been transferred, and
| government isn 't entering an IT-support protection
| racket. Only then is full payout given.
|
| Yes, that means finishing the entire project will take
| quite a bit longer than doing all the dev work. Yes, that
| also means the project is riskier for the contractor and
| has less ongoing reward, and so they will need to be paid
| more initially. But it's worth it in the end.
|
| If there is some gotcha here where the private sector can
| get out with too much proprietary IP or a weak and
| dependent customer in the government, do let me know,
| that is not my intent. I'm trying to envision a
| transitional project to get out of today's privatized
| world to one with better US state capacity.
| patentatt wrote:
| I may be naive, but I'd venture to guess that plenty of $170k
| developers could make a great cloud platform if given the
| chance.
| doublejay1999 wrote:
| its not naive to think there are plenty of talented 120k
| devs sitting in faangs waiting to catch a break.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I think many would jump at the opportunity to be paid to
| pioneer what's known in advance to be highly visible and
| impactful FOSS project. That's like a manhandle-project-
| class career legacy for you, at a fraction of the cost for
| the government.
| adrr wrote:
| Someone straight out of college is going to be making close
| to $50k. $170k would be a very senior person to come in at
| the top level. I can't imagine building a cloud platform at
| the government. What type of hardware is the procurement
| department going to get with the bidding process? You'll
| also won't able to get unix machine or macs to run as your
| development machines, it will be windows boxes filled with
| spyware. I say this as my dad worked as a senior scientist
| creating software / models to track oil spills and toxic
| chemical spills. On his last year before retirement, they
| banned his team from using Macs.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| To your first question, https://www.usds.gov/.
|
| To your second, well, /shrug. A reasonable number of folk
| might well jump at the chance to have a job like that on
| their resume, and there's likely a fair amount of possible
| cross pollination w/ various folk in the DoD/military to
| bring up bodies and relevant expertise (i.e. security).
| 0xy wrote:
| Private sector pays over double the government. Why do you
| think the US government has so many problems with security?
|
| What security engineer worth his salt is going to accept
| half the pay to work for the government where things move
| at a snails pace?
| mellosouls wrote:
| Not everybody is driven solely by money.
| manquer wrote:
| Not every co moves at startup speeds. I have seen plenty
| of large companies move just as slow or slower.
|
| Problems of red tape are not limited to only government
| ,it is function of most large organizations
|
| Plenty of security engineers are constantly frustrated at
| the lack of security focus in corporate sector,
| investments are only made when it affects revenue . Even
| after all the ransomware companies some times do the bare
| minimum and buying insurance
|
| Government on the other hand cares about security for
| different reasons, they take it lot more seriously. They
| don't sacrifice security in the interest of sales.
|
| I would anyday prefer to work for some org where security
| actually matters not where it is inconvenience
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That's all true, but we should also be willing to pay
| more in the public sector. Capping government salaries
| and then paying for consulting is an especially lousy
| form of privatization.
| 0xy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_federal_
| gov...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/us/politics/russia-
| cyber-...
|
| Government doesn't care about the security of your
| personal information, hence why they treat their security
| engineers with contempt by offering them paltry wages and
| drowning them in red tape.
| manquer wrote:
| Government cares about security from foreign threat
| actors. The loss of data to esponiage is a critical
| threat.
|
| Most companies I know treat Security engineers similarly
| and pay not all that much higher. There is world of
| enterprise IT outside the silicon valley, the pay is not
| all the much higher. Despite all the recent threats and
| ransomware attacks security is not treated as it should
| be.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| A former coworker went to work for the USDS. He left a few
| months later and had nothing positive to say. As a whole,
| they do not seem in any way to be competitive with the
| compensation, talent, or innovation of private companies.
|
| You still have to pass a _marijuana_ drug test to work
| there, for heaven 's sake.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _You still have to pass a marijuana drug test to work
| there, for heaven 's sake._
|
| I hate to break it to you, but that's normal in the vast
| majority of companies. So far, I've only lived in two
| states where it was legal, and in both the laws
| specifically allowed employers to test for pot. I'm in
| healthcare, and the company I work for tests everyone on
| entry, and people randomly after that.
|
| If it's ever legalized at the federal level, expect
| employer testing to be specifically allowed.
| Transportation companies, surgeries, heavy industry, and
| a lot of other companies will filter for this, either
| because they or their insurance companies don't want the
| risk.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| > I hate to break it to you, but that's normal in the
| vast majority of companies.
|
| We're talking tech here--the Digital Service--and I've
| never worked at a company that drug tested their
| programmers. Not once, since the 90s, during the full-
| swing War on Drugs.
|
| Anyway, the marijuana test isn't the only antiquated,
| sclerotic thing about the USDS (and Federal employment in
| general). But it's certainly a representative example.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. I don't
| mean any disrespect to you, but...
|
| I'll match you against somebody willing to take $150k for the
| exact same work. I'll match 4 of you against 8 of my hires.
| I'm willing to bet that my $1.2M team will outperform your
| $2M team. I'll very happily match 50 of your team against 75
| of mine. You could poach 25 of mine who prove to be
| superstars, and I'll hire more.
|
| That doesn't mean that you are dumb or incompetent or less
| skilled. I just think that there are some very smart and
| capable people willing to work for $150k. I think that many
| of them are as good as any AWS hire. And I think they could
| be motivated by something besides money to create something
| as good or better than anything from AWS. Indeed, less money
| could itself be a strong motivation to outperform.
|
| Thankfully, we don't live in a world where there are only 10
| geniuses to go around. The world is much much cooler than
| that!
| cellis wrote:
| I'll take that bet. 10 150k public sector employees vs 10
| 250k private sector, its going to be a slaughter in terms
| of productivity in favor of the private sector. In fact I
| would take 10 private sector engineers at 250k vs your 20
| public sector at 150k and would still win.
|
| The reason is not talent, but process. Governments are
| bureaucratic by nature, companies are meritocratic by
| nature. Obviously this is a vast simplification and there
| are exceptions but I wouldn't bet on your team being one.
| scudd wrote:
| I've observed that large corporations are also quite
| capable of bureaucracy.
|
| Although I've never worked in public sector so I can't
| make a cross comparison.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I didn't say my hires would be public sector. They just
| have to produce something that is freely available to the
| public sector and meets a specific public sector need.
| VRay wrote:
| That's nuts, dude
|
| I'd take ONE top faang engineer over 8 government software
| contractors. There's so much tribal knowledge out there
| that people in the Midwest just don't have, not to mention
| a can-do attitude.
|
| It blew my mind the first time I worked with a guy from
| Microsoft on something. We were having issues with some
| code, and he just popped open the kernel and started
| actively debugging things that I'd only vaguely even heard
| about. I feel like I was twice as good at engineering after
| that experience alone.
|
| I had the same experience from the other direction later
| on.. a team of smart, hard-working coders had been dealing
| with stability/perf issues for years on some product. I was
| able to root cause and straighten all of them out in a
| couple of weeks, even though this was in an area of
| software development using a set of tools I'd never touched
| before.
|
| I'll bet a single FAANG-hardened code wizard could
| outperform 20 or 30 government coders.
| mrsalt wrote:
| Can you expand on what do you mean by "just popped open
| the kernel"? I'm genuinely interested in this kind of
| "tribal knowledge" you talk about. Maybe there is
| something we (those reading this thread) could learn and
| make use of.
| sterlind wrote:
| maybe WPA, which lets you sample stack traces from user-
| mode all the way through drivers? Or DbgView, which lets
| you see printk output from kernel mode. Or hell, maybe
| even Windbg debugging the kernel of a Windows VM over
| simulated serial (you need a checked build of Windows to
| get the most bang for your buck there, though.)
|
| the hardest-core thing I've done was step my way through
| Windows startup into the container subsystem, on a real,
| physical target machine I had connected to my dev machine
| over FireWire. I felt like Indiana Jones. (It helped
| having the source code though!)
| wittycardio wrote:
| Lol I'm sorry but the average FAAMG level developer is far
| superior to the average developer. You're not going to be
| able to win that bet.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I don't have to hire average developers. Obviously, I
| will need some exceptional developers.
| manquer wrote:
| How many hours you have to work for that ?. How long before
| you get fired because you didn't kiss someone's ass or can't
| keep competiting with 27year single male with no other life ?
|
| Compensation is only one aspect of a job. Plenty of people
| work in defense while private sector pays more, public
| service motivation, job security, benefits, better work
| hours, more seniority driven promotions there are a ton of
| reasons.
|
| Doesn't mean it is the most efficient way to run an org,
| point is there are enough qualified people who value the
| other benefits more than just the cash.
|
| Funny you mention 170k Amazon is known to have a fairly
| strong cap on base salary compensation. Usually at 150-170k
| range.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Whats the most you can make at government job?
|
| If we were serious about fixing this problem, existing
| federal pay scale constraints would not be a barrier to
| entry.
|
| Legislation could be passed yesterday that would add
| arbitrary pay scales for special purposes such as these.
| Attach an AWS architect salary to a government job and I
| think you will immediately find the skill gap filled. Bonus
| points if you put incentive structures in the employee
| contracts so that the brilliant minds are directly
| incentivized to deliver, rather than via proxy of their
| lobbying container organization.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Or how about we just end this culture of legislative micro-
| management, so that we don't have the problem in the first
| place?
|
| From there, we can give the agency the budget to do the
| job, and let someone who's actually close to the situation
| decide whether it makes more sense to contract it out or
| build an in-person team. A bunch of legislators who are
| well-known to be perpetually too busy conducting
| fundraising lunches with lobbyists to actually read the
| text of the bills they're crafting and voting on are never
| going to be making informed decisions on matters at this
| level of detail.
| xenophonf wrote:
| Legislative oversight of the executive branch is a
| feature, not a bug. Presidents aren't kings, neither are
| cabinet members princes.
|
| That said, appropriations is no barrier to hiring the
| necessary talent. There are plenty of well-run private
| data centers in the federal government, staffed by both
| federal employees and government contractors.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Politician micro-management is a real problem in the US,
| but keep in mind that these restrictions of the
| bureaucracy are a more second-order effect. They are less
| about directly giving the politicians more control than
| keeping the civil service week to the benefit of the
| contractors, and that outcome continues whether or not
| the politicians find it worth their time to meddle with
| any specific project.
|
| Also, it's my understanding that the micro-management is
| more a problem on the state and local level, like NY
| state politicians such as Cuomo forcing the MTA to take
| on debt for these stupid stations rather than improve
| service.
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| The current minority party in the Senate, which under the
| current rules of the chamber is big enough to stop almost
| all legislation from moving, has no incentive to allow this
| to happen. In fact they have a strong incentive to oppose
| it, considering the makeup of their base.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Well, we have to do something about that. I don't like
| designing policy within the constraints of "Actually, we
| cannot have good policy".
| pjc50 wrote:
| The "no you cannot have good policy" party has almost 50%
| of the vote.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yup, they do. So it's really important to try to bring
| some transitional policy about just barely can wedged
| through that will nonetheless have such a effect that the
| balance electorial power and/or policy positions of the
| parties will realign. (In the short term, it may be the
| former, in the long term in better be the latter.)
|
| Tough cookie!
|
| If you can't do that, well, then you better consider
| secession or something. I don't want to live out my old
| age in a "New America, Yukon" military junta rump state
| because some people sit down, blushing, seeing Rubicons
| on all sides in 2021.
|
| (The sad irony of course being that crossing Rubicons
| made military Rubicons then, I know. But it was a lack of
| meaningful other reforms too. So find a Gracchi metaphor
| instead, I guess.)
| paganel wrote:
| > Legislation could be passed yesterday that would add
| arbitrary pay scales for special purposes such as these.
|
| Or maybe add real progressive taxation that would get the
| $500k comps back into normal territory (by, among other
| things, taxing dividends, share options and the like
| accordingly).
| igobyterry wrote:
| ... you mean Openstack, that ended up being a total failure?
| marktangotango wrote:
| Depends on the definition of "failure". I'm sure lots of
| consultancies are doing very well with openstack!
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| People hate on "design by committee", but the real issue is
| you have a bunch orgs all trying make the design as close to
| their shit pile of code that is already written. (Outside of
| that, I think multiple designers with open minds _is_ a good
| thing, but I shouldn 't digress too much.)
|
| (My coworker made an astute prediction (only semi-jokingly)
| that eventually all the standardized binary interfaces would
| eventually transitively refer to all the other standardized
| binary interfaces as the inevitable conclusion of that
| phenomenon, and few stingy large orgs properly separating
| their external interfaces from internals.)
|
| The solution here is to pay a specific contractor to do the
| design and validate with a demo deployment. Oncely once it is
| proven to work, and the government can then set up their own
| in-house (i.e. proove it is real open source by doing the
| tech transfer) is the full money paid out.
|
| This is the computer equivalent of a drug bounty, basically.
| It's high time publicly-funded engineering doesn't just
| deepen private intellectual-property motes.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The state should procure an entirely open source / public
| domain cloud stack that would commeditize the "cloud" space
| allowing any org to run data centers with a standardized
| interface. The state should then run their own data centers in-
| house with the stock design rather than outsourcing those
| operational costs
|
| > This would be far better for society. Compute-for-all.
|
| Yeah, but that could also be the perfect being the enemy of the
| good. IIRC, there have been many, many massive failed military
| IT projects (e.g. they've spent decades trying and failing to
| replace legacy accounting systems). If they tried to build
| their own cloud, a very real possibility is that billions of
| dollars are spent creating an open source cloud platform that
| literally no one wants to use.
|
| Also, my employer actually did implement their own private
| cloud using open source in our own datacenters, but that's been
| abandoned in favor of AWS and Azure. If the military builds it,
| it doesn't mean anyone else will come.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I wouldn't call more another massive privatized
| infrastructure "good" even if it does its job in the the
| short term. I would rather the government gain autonomy even
| if it means temporary adjustment pain.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I wouldn't call more another massive privatized
| infrastructure "good" even if it does its job in the the
| short term.
|
| Good in this case means meeting most or all of the project
| objectives. If they pursue a "perfect" solution, they may
| not do even that, let alone realize the other social goods
| you're hoping for.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I acknowledge your goalposts. I personally value my
| social good goalposts more important than the project
| objectives, and JEDI as originally envisioned is
| _negative_ with respective to my goalposts. It is thus
| net negative to me.
|
| Pithily paraphrased, "Those who would give up essential
| [self-sufficiency], to purchase a little temporary
| [efficiency], deserve neither".
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Pithily paraphrased, "Those who would give up essential
| [self-sufficiency], to purchase a little temporary
| [efficiency], deserve neither".
|
| From the Pentagon's perspective, they're probably meeting
| that with either AWS or Azure. They probably look at
| self-sufficiency as a national, not organizational thing.
| So long as the thing is built and located in the US and
| owned and operated by Americans, it means they're not
| giving up any self-sufficiency.
| Tycho wrote:
| Yeah but it's pretty convenient for the state security
| apparatus to have most important web services and corporate
| infrastructures hosted on the clouds of just two or three
| vendors with which they have close ties but little public
| scrutiny.
| giaour wrote:
| Would something like cloud.gov fit the bill? That was put
| together by 18F and USDS and is run by GSA
| sc68cal wrote:
| But it's basically layered on top of Amazon AWS
|
| https://cloud.gov/docs/technology/iaas/#the-
| infrastructure-u...
|
| So, no I don't think it really fits the bill because
| underneath it's using a solution built by a private business.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Perhaps! I've heard of those agencies but not looked at that
| project.
|
| I guess its "cloud.gov" vs "cloud.mil".
| qwertox wrote:
| Standing on the shoulders of giants.
|
| It would make much more sense to let Microsoft, Amazon or
| Google to span a new data center and let the government wrap it
| entirely with their own monitoring and possibly also a
| specialized access solution.
|
| That way they leverage all the hard work which these US
| companies have already made, all their expertise, and are able
| to keep an eye on all of it.
| nonfamous wrote:
| Microsoft and AWS (not sure about GCP) already provide data
| centers for the exclusive use of the US government and with
| specialized monitoring and access.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > allowing any org to run data centers with a standardized
| interface. The state should then run their own data centers in-
| house with the stock design rather than outsourcing those
| operational costs
|
| I was under the impression that not having to build and operate
| their own datacenters was the idea behind outsourcing cloud.
| Since commercial players are already doing it, the government
| could piggy-back on the economies of scale already being made.
| Plus, they can decide not to renew their contracts and not be
| stuck with a datacenter on the balance sheet.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Imagine a cloud provider run like the DMV.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| taway_scott wrote:
| > The state should procure an entirely open source / public
| domain cloud stack that would commeditize the "cloud" space
| allowing any org to run data centers with a standardized
| interface. The state should then run their own data centers in-
| house with the stock design rather than outsourcing those
| operational costs
|
| Cloud space is already commoditized through AWS, Azure, GCP,
| Oracle and other smaller players right? Is this more of a NIH
| thing?
|
| > This would be far better for society. Compute-for-all.
|
| Can you expand on why/how would this be better for society than
| what we have available today?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| All this does is add friction. I've worked on defense programs
| that were "shared" between contractors and it's massively
| stifling on top of the security constraints.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| See the Ben Rich's story about the government man showing up to
| the crash-speed SR-71 program.
|
| "Mr. Johnson, I don't give a damn whether your plane ever gets
| built. But my forms will be signed and procedures will be
| followed."
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Ben Rich's stories should be considered in context. If you
| take his stories at face value, then the Skunk Works were
| significantly more competent AND HONEST than any of their
| competitors, or the rest of Lockheed!
|
| He found the bullshit tiring because he felt that he didn't
| deserve to deal with it, because he trusted in his own
| competency and honesty.
|
| You can see how all the pieces fall together. Somehow, the
| government has reached a default stance of not really
| trusting in the honesty (and maybe competence) of their
| contractors. And frankly, Ben Rich didn't really believe in
| his competitors either. He just didn't care because he only
| writes about projects that he's also competing in, so he
| thinks that his competence will carry him through (which it
| generally did... not for the F-16 though lol). What about all
| the competitions that doesn't have the strangely competence
| and honest vendor?
|
| DoD saw what a gong-show single source could be (look at
| F-35). They figure multi-vendor, open architecture is the way
| to mitigate that risk.
| cletus wrote:
| Can we just stop writing nonsense like this?
|
| > Shares of Microsoft were down about 0.4% following the news
|
| So the MSFT share price changed well within the norms of daily
| volatility. It doesn't mean anything.
| jedberg wrote:
| Not really. If you look at the chart, there was a huge spike in
| trading the moment the news broke, which then dropped it .4%
| instantly. That's not normal.
|
| FWIW the stock is now back at what it was before the news
| broke.
| cletus wrote:
| But they didn't mention the volume. That might've been
| noteworthy, no?
| bidirectional wrote:
| I wonder if this is meant to show a lack of impact on
| Microsoft's share price? Because I can't imagine any reporter
| at CNBC thinking that a drop to levels last seen on Friday
| lunchtime is notable.
| Traster wrote:
| I think it's more likely just something in the style guide
| that all articles on events impacting public companies note
| the impact on share price. It's not a comment on whether it's
| news in one direction or the other , it's just their
| standard.
| tylersmith wrote:
| That's information people want to know after reading a story
| like this from an outlet like CNBC.
| jhayward wrote:
| To the contrary, it means there was not much material impact on
| the stock value. It answers the question: "What effect was
| there on the stock?"
| hobofan wrote:
| Apparently the Jedi in the header should be capitalized as JEDI
| and is unrelated to the religion.
| kencausey wrote:
| I suspect that the original poster did capitalize it but HN
| 'helpfully' edits such full word capitalization in titles to
| simple capitalization. However, what many may not be aware of
| is that you can go back and fix the title and resubmit it and
| it will be saved as edited. You have, I believe a 2 hour window
| in which to do such an edit.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| My wife currently works as the test lead for the NRO's next
| iteration of the Sentient/ECO program and they named the new
| program Cyberdyne. No relation to the actual Terminator
| program.
|
| Her last program held a voting pool to pick a name and ended up
| with "Totally Not a Laser Death Ray Facility" unfortunately
| coming in 2nd place.
| adolph wrote:
| Are clever acronyms an end run around copyright claims?
| kube-system wrote:
| No need to. Names, titles, and short phrases are not
| protected by copyright.
|
| https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf
|
| You're probably thinking about trademarks, which only protect
| the use of an identifier _when used in the business of a
| particular trade_.
| [deleted]
| energybar wrote:
| check out airforce platform one logo with "the child"
| https://software.af.mil/dsop/services/
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I work for Platform One and many of us are continually
| amazed that Disney hasn't dinged us for this yet. I'm
| pretty sure there have been plans for a while now to get a
| new logo that isn't such a blatant rip off but I have no
| idea where they're going.
|
| I mentioned in another comment that George Lucas tried to
| sue over people calling the SDI "Star Wars" back in 1985. I
| can't find any evidence now, but I believe he once sued
| either the Air Force or NRO (can't remember which) over a
| mission patch with an x-wing on it.
| shadilay wrote:
| In this case wouldn't it be a trademark instead of copyright?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| In which case, there's probably no conflict because you
| don't infringe trademarks if you're in totally different
| markets. Which is why it's OK that there's a Columbia
| encyclopedia and a Columbia sportswear. Or Fisker scissors
| and Fisker electric cars.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It's probably challenging to argue the government is
| infringing Disney's copyright: It's not a remotely related
| field of industry, it's not for profit, and the US government
| is not technically able to hold IP rights itself to anything.
|
| "Star Wars" itself was the name of a previous defense
| program, so, I'm sure this debate was had out decades ago.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| "Star Wars" was actually not the name of the program, it
| was a derogatory nickname coined by Ted Kennedy, akin to
| calling the ACA "Obamacare." [1] The formal name of the
| program was "Strategic Defense Initiative," or "SDI."
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiati
| ve#C...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| You have me there, thank you for the correction.
| jedberg wrote:
| Not to mention that defense program got the nickname Star
| Wars after Lucas released the movie.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Star Wars was released 6 years before SDI was created, so
| I don't see how it would be any other way?
| jedberg wrote:
| Exactly.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| He didn't win, but George Lucas actually did try to sue
| over that:
| https://www.leagle.com/decision/19851553622fsupp93111385
| talideon wrote:
| This would be trademark law if anything, not copyright.
| croes wrote:
| Otherwise it should be named SITH
| dunreith wrote:
| the Secure Information Technology Hub(tm)?
| zod50 wrote:
| > The Pentagon said in the press release that it still needs
| enterprise-scale cloud capability and announced a new multi-
| vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability.
| The agency said it plans to solicit proposals from both Amazon
| and Microsoft for the contract, adding that they are the only
| cloud service providers that can meet its needs.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| And if they both say no...?
| paxys wrote:
| They'll be forced to do what they should have done from the
| get go - invest into building their own infrastructure.
| mtgx wrote:
| Joint _War_ -fighter?
|
| I guess the DoD is no longer shy about its intentions for US'
| permanent state of war...
|
| Next up: DoD's name change to _DoW_?
| hintymad wrote:
| I can understand Google employees' passion to curb the power of
| military. I myself strongly support keeping government's power
| in check too. But the hatred towards the military, to the point
| of actively sabotaging military's effort to improve itself?
| That I don't understand. I really wish those employees travel
| back in time to experience the European people's life under
| Mongolian's reign, or the Aztec's life when Spaniards attacked,
| or the life of people in Manchurian when Nurgaci's tribe was
| rising in the early 17th century, or the life of Chinese people
| merely a hundred years ago when Japanese invaded. Shouldn't it
| mean something when millions of innocent people were
| slaughtered in a matter of years, or when a civilization
| (especially a more advanced one) got destroyed, or when a
| nation's human rights were stepped on?
|
| P.S., it's worth mentioning that it was the Manchurian who
| restored slavery in Qing Dynasty. The word Nucai in Chinese or
| myeongsa in Korean, meaning Your Slave, was such an honorary
| title that for more than 300 years until early 20th century
| only those who were trusted by the royals could use. Yeah,
| don't wanna be a slave? Build a good army.
| roflulz wrote:
| isn't the US Military the equivalent of the "Manchu" here?
| (The US Military wiped out the natives, took all their land,
| and brought and enforced slavery on this land?) Didn't the US
| just annex Hawaii as an official state a few years ago? Isn't
| all of California land that the military just kinda stole
| from Mexico?
| 14u2c wrote:
| >Didn't the US just annex Hawaii as an official state a few
| years ago?
|
| I suppose if you consider 1898 a few years ago.
| neither_color wrote:
| The answer to all of your questions is no, but this kind of
| discussion belongs on reddit anyways.
| [deleted]
| fairramone wrote:
| Wow, that has got to sting for Google Cloud and Oracle.
| arenaninja wrote:
| Looks like good news for VMware, I believe one of the few
| players focusing in multi-cloud setups
| sofixa wrote:
| Everyone bar AWS is focusing on multicloud. And VMware's
| offerings are utter shite and very poor features wise (
| where it matters), so I doubt they'll be impacted.
|
| ( Their offerings were so bad they were forced to sell
| their vSphere as a service arm to a low cost hosting
| provider. Even with the popularity of that dumpster fire in
| DCs and most companies moving away from DCs they still
| couldn't capture any market share)
| snug wrote:
| Google Cloud bowed out of the race several years ago
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-heres-why-were-
| pulling-...
| briffle wrote:
| Google withdrew from the original bid due to objections by
| its employees.
| RKearney wrote:
| A memo went out last year about all federal networks
| supporting IPv6 only in the coming years. Since Google's
| cloud doesn't really support IPv6 at all, I don't think
| they were going to win the contract anyway.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Google was already considered unlikely to win before its
| withdrawal, so I'd be hesitant to attribute the withdrawal
| primarily to this.
|
| Unlike AWS and Azure, Google doesn't offer any GovCloud
| regions, only Fedramp which seems to apply to unclassified
| data only.
| 0xy wrote:
| That was an excuse and a convenient cover story. GCP can't
| even serve the needs of large organizations, they
| definitely can't service the government. Couple that with
| the leaked plans to shut the thing down because it's an
| abject failure (it's a money pit for Google), and why would
| you want to be on the platform of certain disaster?
|
| I've had demos from GCP sales reps, and the platform is
| shambolic. It doesn't even work during sales presentations.
| sofixa wrote:
| It serves companies like _checks notes_ Google, Apple,
| Spotify. I think it works just fine.
|
| As for anecdata, the only cloud platform I've heard
| _nothing_ positive is Azure.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| + Twitter and Snapchat
| 0xy wrote:
| > Twitter
|
| Except the most important part of Twitter -- timelines,
| of course. [1]
|
| > Snapchat
|
| Except the $1 billion contract from AWS, of course. [2]
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/15/twitter-taps-aws-
| for-its-l...
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/2017/02/09/snap-inc-signs-big-
| aws-deal/
| dialogbox wrote:
| That doesn't mean GCP is bad unless they totally switched
| to AWS. I believe this is just part of multi cloud
| approach.
| gregshap wrote:
| GCP runs on Google, Google doesn't run on GCP.
| Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
| > GCP can't even serve the needs of large organizations,
| they definitely can't service the government.
|
| Not sure where you've gotten this information from. GCP
| serves many "large organizations" including government
| agencies [0].
|
| > I've had demos from GCP sales reps, and the platform is
| shambolic. It doesn't even work during sales
| presentations.
|
| This feels very hyperbolic to me. Either way, demos don't
| always work out the way you intend.
|
| [0] https://cloud.google.com/solutions/government
| 0xy wrote:
| Your example of a "large organization" is the state of
| Arizona? Australia Post, a tiny regional mail delivery
| company? What's your definition of "large"?
|
| Also, it's evident they cannot service those customers.
| Australia Post has a large contract with AWS. Whoops.
|
| I've worked in many large organizations. I've received
| GCP pitches. I've participated in evaluations of GCP as a
| technology solution. It's substantially worse than Azure,
| plus according to their leaked massive losses on the
| product it'll be shuttered this decade.
|
| >This feels very hyperbolic to me
|
| Their dashboards are typical Angular heavyweight clunk,
| with confusing error messages, infinite loading spinners
| and things break constantly. It's been discussed here
| extensively. [1]
|
| Their actual decent products (BigQuery) are hamstrung by
| the rest of the failing platform.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409
| k12sosse wrote:
| You know for all the shit Microsoft gets here, Azure is
| pretty amazing to work with. I'm gonna say it.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| GCP has some good bits. They're just running into the
| same problem everyone had catching Windows: it's _really_
| hard to compete from a fresh start with something that 's
| been incrementally improved over years of significant
| use.
|
| Especially when you're Google (our customers aren't as
| smart as us) competing with Amazon.
| paulddraper wrote:
| And IBM Cloud.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Seems like the right move, and also fits my overall investment
| thesis: "Never bet against Bezos*"
|
| *unless he is trying to launch rockets, which somehow he
| catastrophically sucks at
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Not to give Bezos' team all the credit in the world (they're
| launching the rockets, not Bezos) but rockets are hard. It's
| literal rocket science =/
| manquer wrote:
| Perhaps, while it is still a tough field, Nowadays there are
| plenty of successful companies in this space : rocket labs,
| astra , spaceX , virgin orbit have all launched payloads in
| the last 10 years then there are new players like Terran .
|
| It is still not easy , but as difficult as say 20 years back.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Technology has progressed quite a bit in 20 years, of
| course. And, I don't know the answer, but with all of these
| companies joining in on the space race, did regulations
| lighten up or was it just the funding cuts to the space
| program that spurred this?
| manquer wrote:
| Regulations are still tight in many areas due to ITAR ,
| the concerns to prevent basaltic missile tech from
| potentially being leaked to countries without it have not
| changed.
|
| To an extent NASA's Commercial Crew program and other
| commercial engagement vision worked in triggering
| commercial industry
|
| I think it more that technology has changing a lot making
| it less expensive to attempt building a vehicle. Today,
| for example Terran is considering building a lot of their
| rocket with 3D printing, Rocket Labs does that already
| for their rocket parts. Talent availability with the
| right skills has become easier in the recent years
| probably helps.
| jedberg wrote:
| FWIW, Bezos stopped being the CEO yesterday. So technically
| this is Andy's win...
| quesera wrote:
| > rockets ... catastrophically
|
| I admire the faith he demonstrates in his team, by being among
| the first human lives at risk in a launched Blue Origin
| vehicle.
|
| But maybe 57 is just the new 27.
| hourislate wrote:
| Space X will be landing the Starship on the Moon and Bozo
| will still be flying 3-4 people to the stratosphere. Guy
| should stick to what he is good at, running a sweat shop and
| trinket delivery. I put more faith in Boeing as I find Blue
| Origin more of a C player.
| zeusk wrote:
| Says a lot that his other company Amazon is using
| ULA/Boeing for Kuiper satellites to compete with spacex.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Fair enough. But suborbital hops are so 2010. Not gonna get
| out of bed for anything less than LEO.
| imglorp wrote:
| Yeah, it seems suborbital is really only good for tourism
| and getting good rocketry practice. At least they're on the
| path to orbital: New Glenn appears to be late 2022 with
| some customers booked in 2023.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I will believe literally nothing about the New Glenn
| until it launches. Not to mention landing the first
| stage, which was the only part which made this rocket
| competitive, and is _extremely_ hard to get right on the
| first try.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I wonder what impact Graviton had on this decision. Seems like
| self designed chips would be attractive from a cyber defense
| perspective.
| supertrope wrote:
| Intel is already made in USA.
| [deleted]
| pyuser583 wrote:
| This really sucks.
|
| They're cancelling it because they don't need it anymore. They
| need something like it, but the requirements have become archaic.
|
| The fact that this was kept up in litigation until the technology
| became archaic is really, really disturbing.
| ars wrote:
| > The fact that this was kept up in litigation until the
| technology became archaic is really, really disturbing.
|
| And also, in a way, really really good. It gave them time to
| know what they actually need and not waste money on something
| they (incorrectly) thought they needed.
| lumost wrote:
| This can also describe almost every software project in
| history. By my estimation any project delay will incur a
| redesign which is 50% due to new technology being developed
| and 50% due to different parties in the design discussion.
|
| Even in Defense contracting land, If you delay a contract by
| 5 years then nobody from the original proposal will still be
| around. Had the contract originally gone through there would
| probably be incremental development to keep it up with the
| times.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This whole thing is a joke. I don't think any of us working as
| DoD developers give much of a crap what cloud provider you force
| us to use. But just pick something, anything. Quit switching the
| ground out from underneath us every couple years. The present
| state being the way it is, we're forced to be provider-agnostic
| to effectively everything, which means we need to stand up our
| own self-hosted services down to running our own Kubernetes
| engines and deploying our own NFS servers and database servers,
| and the only managed services we use at all are the ones to
| deploy the basic network infrastructure and VMs.
|
| Linode can give us servers for probably 1/10th the cost of AWS or
| Azure if you're not going to actually let us use any managed
| services.
|
| And people want to know why all defense projects are constantly
| behind schedule and over budget.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Agreed. Kubernetes is eating the cloud and those big cloud
| providers should be scared. The future of these cloud platform
| providers is as a utility for virtualised hardware, storage and
| networking, firewall - and that's about it. The software layer
| belongs in the kube.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Is it? Seems like it's eating the sunset of services that
| allow you to scale containers. But I don't see it eating any
| of the big services that cloud providers like aws care about.
| Like managed databases, queuing services (sqs), messaging
| services (ses), etc.
| catern wrote:
| >the only managed services we use at all are the ones to deploy
| the basic network infrastructure and VMs.
|
| I don't know... that kind of sounds like a good idea to me.
| Vendor lock-in is serious, and we don't need a 50-year DoD
| drip-feed going to whatever cloud vendor wins the contest
| today.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| >I don't think any of us working as DoD developers give much of
| a crap what cloud provider you force us to use
|
| The fundamental problem is that you aren't the one choosing or
| buying these services. The "people who give a crap" is some mix
| of political and industrial people with a very light sprinkling
| of high level program which are driving the requirements.
|
| So it has nothing - literally nothing - to do with what you as
| the actual person who is doing the work, want or need to be
| effective.
|
| This is how the government acquisitions process is written into
| law unfortunately and I've pushed hard within the government to
| change that in the past (to some very limited success).
| paulddraper wrote:
| As a former DoD contractor, you have my deepest sympathies.
| stoicjumbotron wrote:
| Why did Microsoft's shares go down and Amazon's went up?
| karmasimida wrote:
| Because it means MSFT now didn't have this exclusive contract
| with Pentagon?
|
| Edit: DARPA -> Pentagon
| jnwatson wrote:
| This contract is not related to DARPA.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I mean Pentagon, edited
| [deleted]
| azinman2 wrote:
| While I don't know the specifics of JEDI, it seems problematic
| that military data is being stored in a civilian center at all,
| and one that's likely to be internet connected. Every day
| practically we see a new breach, and there's two things in
| common: a weak point in software, and the internet. Will JEDI be
| completely air gapped?
| streetcat1 wrote:
| Per my understanding there would be data centers dedicated to
| the army.
| croes wrote:
| You want to air gap the cloud solution?
| patch_cable wrote:
| It has been done before:
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-the-
| new...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Once upon a time, telecommunication networks were built
| point-to-point or otherwise non-publicly switched. I
| believe the telephone network, for example, is still this
| way, which includes more than just telephones but also ISDN
| lines and likely other technologies/use cases as well.
| There's no reason you couldn't have military facilities on
| their own network connected to servers in their own cloud,
| as this AWS instance has shown.
| mabbo wrote:
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-the-new...
|
| > The AWS Top Secret Region was launched three years ago as the
| first air-gapped commercial cloud and customers across the U.S.
| Intelligence Community have made it a resounding success.
|
| AWS has provided air-gapped regions to the US Government for 6+
| years, according to that blog post.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The expectations placed on military compliant service is pretty
| significant, in that it's generally going to be dedicated boxes
| and networks and significant controls to prevent any easy
| movement between enterprise or consumer users and government.
| (Most government cloud customers are already on a pretty
| separated area from everything else.)
|
| But presumably Internet connectivity is the entire point of why
| they'd want a cloud contract: The government already has
| servers in buildings. It sounds like they particularly want the
| global reach of a cloud service, probably for activities
| intentionally intended to be on the Internet.
|
| I mean, bear in mind, if you're a state-level actor that
| engages in cyberattacks, you need to be on the Internet to do
| them... Not saying that's the purpose of the JEDI contract,
| just that... there's plenty of scenarios where the military
| wants Internet-connected things.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In taking a contract like this, I (as a company owner) would
| be more concerned with the thought that I just added my
| datacenter to someone's priority target list.
|
| On the other hand, let's be honest... In strategy for a
| modern war, Microsoft and Amazon's major datacenters are
| _already_ on someone 's priority target list.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yeah, the thing is too, global actors have already learned
| that attacking corporate entities is a really good way to
| screw with our public sector too. And it's a lot easier to
| wreak havoc by attacking major municipalities than trying
| to inject code onto an F-35, and arguably, the former is
| capable of doing more damage than the latter.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You can do both. And I doubt it's about trying to modify
| the f-35 design (tho maybe), but more likely simply
| exfiltrate all the data, possibly with some ability to
| "rm *" on demand.
| jedberg wrote:
| There is a reason Amazon and Microsoft keep the locations
| of their datacenters secret. They are unlabeled buildings.
| If you drove by it you'd have no idea what it was.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That secrecy really only works for the 90-99% of people
| they want to keep out who would be showing up at their
| door for "lookey-loo" purposes.
|
| Every nation-state actor knows where every datacenter is
| of every major digital player, because they've already
| implanted spies in those companies and the location maps
| of those datacenters are not internally secret. It'd be
| very hard to make them internally secret, since those DCs
| communicate with the rest of the network and must be
| controlled in realtime by site reliability engineers.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Pretty much. If you have a datacenter in your local
| vicinity, it's also not hard to find it: It's the
| building with far more air conditioning equipment than
| seems reasonable for a building it's size, with security
| cameras every two and a half feet.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Wikileaks also leaked the locations of all the AWS
| buildings a couple years ago.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| > Last year, the Pentagon's inspector general released a report
| saying that the award did not appear to be influenced by the
| White House. However, the inspector general noted in the 313-page
| report published in April 2020, that it had limited cooperation
| from White House officials throughout its review and, as a
| result, it could not complete its assessment of allegations of
| ethical misconduct.
|
| Everyone knows the Bezos-run WaPo is Pravda for the Democratic
| Party. It's not a huge stretch to think Bezos is being repaid for
| his 2020 contributions. It really feels like both MS and Amazon
| should have been kept out of bidding for this out of CoI fears.
| danghypocrite wrote:
| Any comment like this against republicans or libertareans would
| get somebody banned by @dang.
|
| Hacker news is basically Gab for nazi programmers.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| WaPo is propaganda for Bezos, but even then he tries to pretend
| that there is some editorial independence.
|
| WaPo would only be pro-Democrats as long as it benefited Bezos,
| or if individual journalists leaned that way.
|
| I really doubt there is a quid pro quo of a $10bn contract for
| what limited sway Bezos has over WaPo.
|
| If anything, the fact that Oracle did not receive the original
| contract shows how limited political contributions were in
| affecting the outcome of this contract. Larry Ellison was a big
| financier of the last administration.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Where does this myth that Bezos is giant Democratic Party
| supporter come from? Amazon and it's subsidiaries donate to
| both major political parties and many members of the Democratic
| Party are very vocally against Bezos.
| jaywalk wrote:
| It comes from the fact that his newspaper is far-left. But
| you are correct in that it doesn't appear to reflect his
| personal political ideology.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I think it takes a fairly narrow, USA_centric, unaware of
| actual variety and detail of the world outside perspective,
| to think Washington Post is either "Far Left" (hint: it
| goes a lot further than WaPo;) or like Pravda.
|
| While I think it does have somewhat progressive slant,
| especially in more opinion pieces; you only have to go to
| our mainstream Canadian party to go WAAAAY further left
| than WaPo - and that's nothing to say of other continents,
| countries, parties and newspapers.
|
| Similar to Pravda comparison.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Why do non-US people feel the need to whine about this
| all the time? "They wouldn't be far-left in my country!"
| is completely irrelevant and contributes nothing to the
| conversation. In the US, which is where both I and WaPo
| reside, they are far-left.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Maybe because people like you bring up a weird stance
| that isn't objectively true snd likely not true to the
| majority of Americans. WaPo is centerist neoliberal in
| reality, but Americans likely view it as to the left and
| liberal. But nothing wild. They aren't going crazy for
| Bernie or Ilhan Omar. They certainly are not talking
| about people to the left of them. Who would be far left.
|
| Your point really breaks down when you would have no way
| to classify thoughts and media one or two or three steps
| more to The left of WaPo. Even if you add "radical left"
| for one spot further to the left. There's nothing else
| after that.
|
| Or you're taking the stance of Fox News and co. who will
| dishonestly wonder if Biden is a socialist.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Fair enough, let's leave the rest of the world aside:
|
| I am disputing the notion that in USA, Washington Post is
| "far left".
|
| I can understand that for any given person any given
| media outlet may feel central, a little, or far to the
| left or right of _their_ position.
|
| But if we are to create any kind of external scale, with
| whatever measurement (relative based on how far axis go,
| or by some thresholds of specific criteria), I would
| doubt Washington Post fits on the "far left" of that
| scale.
|
| (in for a penny, in for a pound addendum: I understand
| that in USA there's also an effort/inclination to label
| ANYthing "left" as extreme, far left, antifa, socialist,
| pinkie, commie, fake news, etc; terms that are implicitly
| meant to be derogatory; but that effort does not need to
| be engaged with in a rational discourse. To rephrase:
| Just because Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly et cetera may
| call Washington Post "Far Left", doesn't make it so - in
| those cases it's a label meant to paint & incite and
| cater to an "in crowd", not be a part of meaningful
| engagement and honest wide-ranging discussion)
|
| [Addendum to addendum: there was nothing in original post
| that said "Washington Post is Far Left _in USA term_ ";
| it was a open claim posted to an international site, many
| of whom read or access Washington Post as a globally-
| relevant newspaper, so I don't feel assuming a global
| perspective is "whining". Or to put it in your preferred
| terms: Why do some USA people whine where perspective is
| brought in :-]
| alistairSH wrote:
| The conservative movement in the US has been playing this
| game for decades. Growing up during the Reagan era,
| "liberal" was a dirty word.
|
| In a fit of rage, my center-right sibling once called me
| a socialist, as if that would hurt my feelings.
| williamscales wrote:
| I'm a US person and I have to say I agree that Washington
| Post is not far-left. While it's true that the relevant
| question is "what are the conditions in my country?",
| it's important to remember that part of the GOP's
| identity politics has been to paint even moderately left
| and centrist positions as "far-left".
|
| That said, within the US political climate, WaPo is
| definitely left of center. Just not far-left.
| alistairSH wrote:
| If you consider the Washington Post to be far-left, you
| might need to recalibrate your Overton window. The paper
| leans slightly left. It's far from the Daily Kos.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Where does this myth that Bezos is giant Democratic Party
| supporter come from?_
|
| Believe it started with Trump. The _Post_ is a beltway paper.
| It's a chronicle for Washington insiders, and they never
| liked Trump. So the _Post_ had a critical stance towards him,
| which in turn lead to him branding it as leftist. (Which is
| false. Its bias is best described as institutionalist and
| statist, which finds alignment across the political spectrum
| and parties.)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It aligns with the weird conservative attachment to
| conspiracy theorists.
|
| George Soros is 90 and nobody really remembers why he was so
| "bad", Bezos is a great replacement.
| patentatt wrote:
| No, they'll need a new target to paint as a 'globalist,'
| Bezos doesn't inspire the same amount of irrational hatred
| in this crowd for some completely unknown reason.
| xenophonf wrote:
| The reason Soros gets such hate is straight up
| antisemitism. The dude's Jewish. The "globalist" epithet
| is a modern reworking of the old "international Jewish
| banker" stereotype. That particular dogwhistle doesn't
| apply to Bezos.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| Oh for fucks sake. This is what, Amazon's third chance at the
| trough? At what point is it cheating?
|
| Disclosure: long MSFT.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| You can blame Trump for it. He tainted the contract process
| because he hates Bezos (who owns WaPo). This was the key point
| that Amazon focused on in their objection.
|
| edit: re: downvotes - the article states this in the sixth
| paragraph
| ralph84 wrote:
| Except there was never any evidence that Trump got involved,
| even after multiple independent reviews. MSFT just made a
| better proposal and AMZN was able to use the broken protest
| process to tie things up long enough to make canceling the
| fastest way forward for the DoD.
| Woden501 wrote:
| I'm sorry but the second these words left his mouth
| obviously indicating his displeasure with the likelihood of
| Amazon winning the contract he had influenced the outcome.
|
| "I will be asking them to look at it very closely to see
| what's going on because I have had very few things where
| there's been such complaining," Trump said. "Not only
| complaining from the media -- or at least asking questions
| about it from the media -- but complaining from different
| companies like Microsoft and Oracle and IBM. Great
| companies are complaining about it. So we're going to take
| a look at it. We'll take a very strong look at it. Thank
| you very much everybody."
|
| He head already shown at this point that he was an old boys
| club type of guy that would go after anyone who disagreed
| and support anyone who kissed his ass, so anyone having a
| hand in the selection of the winner of the contract that
| wanted favor with the president would obviously attempt to
| influence the outcome to not be Amazon.
|
| He should have kept his mouth shut on such a massive
| pending contract, but it's pretty obvious by now that
| keeping his mouth shut isn't something he's physically
| capable of doing.
|
| Now instead of having started on a crucial service that is
| needed by our military we're looking at likely further
| years of delays. All because the president was butthurt
| over some mean words in a newspaper.
| slownews45 wrote:
| What?
|
| A couple of points. The whitehouse blocked any disclosures
| of discussions / pressure even to the inspector general.
| They also issued notices to staff not to talk to IG. That's
| a pretty darn good sign that there WAS involvement by the
| whitehouse.
|
| The DoD is dropping this case because they were asked to
| reveal some of this information. Instead of disclosing it,
| they elect to cancel the contract. This was a specific
| issue in the current case, would DoD have to reveal this
| type of communication from whitehouse.
|
| Yes - people claim no pressure / no involvement - but it's
| blindingly obvious that there is a very good chance there
| was pressure.
|
| I have past experience with govt contracting so have a
| sense for what the flows look like.
|
| Contract selection put on hold, involvement of a political
| person (probably esper here). Ban on anyone talking about
| the potential discussion to internal auditors. Those are
| all the red flags.
| 0xy wrote:
| "There's no evidence therefore that's proof there was
| involvement"
|
| What? You're trying to pass off absolutely zero evidence
| as proof.
| slownews45 wrote:
| I was responding to this statement - "Except there was
| never any evidence that Trump got involved, even after
| multiple independent reviews."
|
| The IG review specifically noted all the ways that Trump
| / Whitehouse blocked the answer to that question.
|
| The Whitehouse then also got rid of IG Fine in April 2020
| - I mean, this guy served 28 years in justice then
| through bush / clinton / obama terms as an IG.
|
| Amazon also dug up stuff where Trump promised to GET
| involved.
|
| No one "cleared" trump in this. He stonewalled as long as
| he could.
| spoonjim wrote:
| There isn't any evidence but people adjust their priors
| based on historical conduct, and at some point you lose the
| benefit of the doubt.
| Thaxll wrote:
| "A federal court said on Wednesday that it did not dismiss
| the possibility that former President Donald J. Trump
| interfered in the awarding of a military cloud-computing
| contract worth $10 billion, a decision that could result in
| the overhaul of a long-running effort to modernize
| technology at the Defense Department."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/technology/trump-jedi-
| pen...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I can't read the article due to paywall, but "did not
| dismiss the idea that" is different from "there is
| evidence that".
|
| Can you summarize/quote the relevant parts of the
| article? What evidence did the court find?
| slownews45 wrote:
| They key thing was the court saw enough smoke to keep
| case alive AND it looked like recently was going to force
| some disclosure around communications from whitehouse
| (whitehouse has variously claimed no involvement).
| ralph84 wrote:
| And Trump hasn't dismissed the possibility that he won
| the 2020 election. At some point you have to produce the
| evidence. Where are the career DoD procurement people
| leaking to WaPo that they were pressured?
|
| This was AMZN thinking that all they needed to include in
| their proposal was market share numbers. MSFT's proposal
| was more responsive to the DoD's needs.
| paxys wrote:
| The contract should have gone to Amazon years ago. The fact
| that two fair evaluations in their favor got overturned (first
| by Oracle's lobbyists, then by Trump's intervention) was the
| cheating part.
| [deleted]
| slownews45 wrote:
| The push by the Trump administration to kick Amazon off this
| contract was as pathetic as it was ham handed.
|
| Trump administration had asserted a "presidential
| communications privilege." when asked if they leaned on the DoD
| to deselect Amazon.
|
| Pentagon lawyers instructed Defense officials not to talk with
| the IG about any discussions they may have had with the White
| House about JEDI.
|
| So basically - you know for SURE that there were communications
| about this.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| that's what happen when develop a bloat driven culture
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Not surprised. Redoing this drops any ability to suspect Trump's
| tampering, and in the past three or four years, they likely have
| a wish list of adjustments anyways. Starting over allows them to
| address both.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Geesh, I left Microsoft in December, but back then it was all
| hands on deck, drop everything else, to meet this contract, and I
| doubt much has changed. I had a feeling it would be a bad end
| even if JEDI paid off, because so much else was being neglected.
| Now though....
| [deleted]
| daxfohl wrote:
| Not to mention employee morale
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