Breitbart
Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), bought Amazon call options just six weeks before the Pentagon announced it was canceling a multi-billion dollar contract with Microsoft and starting a new one that opened a door for Amazon’s participation. The Biden Pentagon on Tuesday abruptly announced it was canceling its multi-billion JEDI cloud services contract with Microsoft and starting a new one that Amazon could compete for. Amazon had been favored to win the JEDI contract after the idea for a single cloud infrastructure was first conceived in 2017, but it was ultimately awarded to Microsoft in 2019. Amazon sued, arguing they lost due to then-President Donald Trump’s personal dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. A Pentagon inspector general report found that Trump did not interfere in the contract. The Pentagon said the new contract, “Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability” or JWCC, would be “multi-vendor” and “multi-cloud” and explicitly named Microsoft and Amazon as the two top contenders: The Department intends to seek proposals from a limited number of sources, namely the Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as available market research indicates that these two vendors are the only Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) capable of meeting the Department’s requirements. However, as noted in its Pre-Solicitation Notice, the Department will immediately engage with industry and continue its market research to determine whether any other U.S.-based hyperscale CSPs can also meet the DoD’s requirements. If so, those Department will also negotiate with those companies. During a conference call with reporters following the decision, the Pentagon’s Acting Chief Information Officer John Sherman said although it is not guaranteed, both Amazon and Microsoft will “likely” be awarded parts of the new contract.
