Pentagon Pauses $10 Billion Contract

According to the earlier reports, Amazon was very close to winning the JEDI contract. But now Pentagon is likely to delay awarding its $10 billion cloud computing contract to Amazon until the completion of Defense Department re-examination process due to the accusations of favoritism towards Amazon.

JEDI has been one of the most controversial Pentagon technology contracts with rebukes, lawsuits, and several investigations. It is also being considered as one of the high-profile contracts to store, collect sensitive military data and also to give U.S. war fighters access to cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI).

This entire contracting process has involved bids from companies like Amazon, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon. The contract has been in controversy over the past few months. Recently, Alphabet Inc.’s Google also opted out of the race saying that the project may conflict with its corporate values, especially due to the principles it has laid out for ethical use of artificial intelligence.

A Pentagon spokesperson Elissa Smith said, “Keeping his promise to Members of Congress and the American public, Secretary Esper is looking at the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. No decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination.”