Amazon to challenge loss of Pentagon cloud deal in court

Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc has given notice that it will file a lawsuit challenging the Defense Department’s decision to award Microsoft Corp a cloud computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion over a decade.
The e-commerce giant plans to lodge its complaint against the contract in the US Court of Federal Claims, Seattle-based Amazon confirmed. The company’s challenge was earlier reported by the Federal Times. A representative for the Defense Department said the agency wouldn’t speculate on potential litigation.
Oracle Corp is also mounting a legal challenge to the cloud contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure(JEDI). The project is designed to consolidate the Defense Department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernise its technology systems.
Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement that the procurement was tainted by bias and evaluation deficiencies.
“It’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence,” he said. “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”
The Defense Department is grappling with dueling allegations that political interference may have helped or hurt Amazon’s chances of winning the contract. Some lawmakers questioned whether US President Donald Trump unfairly intervened in the process against Amazon. Trump has long been at odds with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at a news conference in Seoul that he backed the decision-making process for the JEDI cloud computing contract.
“I am confident that it was conducted freely and fairly without any type of outside influence, and I’ll just leave it at that,” Esper said in response to a question on whether Trump had asked him to bypass Amazon.
Trump surprised the industry earlier this year when he openly questioned whether the contract was being competitively bid, citing complaints from Microsoft, Oracle and International Business Machines Corp.
A new book by Guy Snodgrass, a speechwriter to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, alleges that Trump, in the summer of 2018, told Mattis to “screw Amazon” and lock it out of the bid. Mattis didn’t do what Trump asked, Snodgrass wrote. Mattis has criticised the book. Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said during his confirmation hearing in late October that to the best of his knowledge, no one from the White House reached out to any members of the JEDI cloud contract selection team.
Meanwhile, Oracle has alleged in court that former Pentagon employees with ties to Amazon may have structured the deal to favour Amazon. Oracle is appealing a July ruling from the US Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge to the cloud contract. Amazon offered at least two former Pentagon officials jobs while they were working on the procurement, according to the lawsuit.