{"id":37444,"date":"2019-05-20T17:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2019\/05\/20\/is-this-a-jedi-mind-trick\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:23:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:23:49","slug":"is-this-a-jedi-mind-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/opinion\/2019\/05\/20\/is-this-a-jedi-mind-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this a JEDI mind trick?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you think this column is about cloud security, it\u2019s not. That was a debate that raged about five years ago but has since passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, what I don\u2019t question is industry\u2019s ability to develop a secure, capable cloud infrastructure for the Pentagon. Both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, the last companies standing in the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative, or JEDI, competition, count civilian agencies and corporations from other highly regulated markets among their customers. This is far from an insurmountable technology challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What I do question is how on earth the Pentagon screwed up the competition so badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Consider where we\u2019re at: Prior to the downselect, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federaltimes.com\/acquisition\/2018\/12\/10\/oracle-takes-jedi-protest-to-federal-court\/\" target=_blank>Oracle launched a lawsuit<\/a>, which eventually led to an internal Pentagon ethics investigation and a pause on the program. That investigation wrapped, with the Pentagon claiming that the contract could be awarded as early as mid-July, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federaltimes.com\/acquisition\/2019\/04\/11\/despite-the-potential-ethical-violations-jedi-moves-forward\/\" target=_blank>even as critics still argued the JEDI contract is effectively tailored for Amazon Web Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But wait \u2014 Oracle was not done. An amended complaint released this month alleges that at least two Pentagon employees were offered jobs at AWS while working on the cloud contract, one of which helped design the requirements in a way that was favorable to Amazon after receiving \u201csignificant\u201d job and bonus offers from Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, we see conflict of interest protests with government contracts all the time \u2014 where one bidder claims another bidder has an advantage because of a particular employee who used to work at the agency; or vice versa, because a government official involved in the competition used to work for a bidder. It\u2019s one of the complexities of that revolving door between government and industry that I\u2019ve written a lot about lately. I\u2019d like to think that typically such conflicts either are overstated in protests or are unintentional. There are firewalls in place to help prevent misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the allegations here are true though, the situation is more sinister \u2014 essentially pointing to an orchestrated effort to bribe a government influencer to stack the deck for a company in exchange for a cushy position and lucrative paycheck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if not true, then the situation transforms from sinister to one of sheer ineptitude. With a $10 billion contract still overcoming unfortunate but not terribly unusual challenges to moving forward, why on earth did the Pentagon not pay closer attention \u2014 managing the situation to avoid even the appearance of impropriety? And if such poor oversight is happening now, who\u2019s to say that the procurement itself was written in such a way to ensure fair competition and to meet the demands of the Department of Defense for a cloud infrastructure that can serve the needs of the war fighter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m not the only one asking that question it appears. We just learned defense appropriators in the House of Representatives <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federaltimes.com\/\/it-networks\/2019\/05\/20\/house-appropriators-lack-faith-in-jedi-plan-choke-funds\/\" target=_blank>intend to strip funding from the Pentagon\u2019s JEDI cloud computing program<\/a>, arguing &#8220;that this approach may lock the Department of Defense into a single provider for potentially as long as ten years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If I was a betting person, I\u2019d say that the acquisition strategy will likely move forward. The court will dig, the Pentagon watchdogs will inquire, and in the end the official decision-makers will say that while perhaps proper care was not taken and certain additional firewalls may need to be put in, the requirements are just and dictate that Microsoft and AWS should be the last two companies standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regardless, can the Pentagon afford to be this sloppy? Should we not be concerned that enough red flags have sprouted out of this competition to warrant multiple lawsuits and program delays? It\u2019s high time DoD and industry learn that perception is reality. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federaltimes.com\/acquisition\/2019\/04\/30\/i-wouldnt-have-changed-a-single-thing-dds-head-reflects-on-the-jedi-wars\/\" target=\"_blank\">In an interview <\/a>with Defense News Deputy Editor Aaron Mehta, Chris Lynch, founder of the Defense Digital Service that established the requirements for JEDI said this: \u201cNothing comes for free. You can\u2019t make a substantial change at the Department of Defense without pushing really hard on some things that need to be pushed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fair enough, but let\u2019s not throw due diligence out the window. As one former defense official said to me: \u201cThe optics sure suck.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don\u2019t question industry\u2019s ability to develop a secure, capable cloud infrastructure for the Pentagon. I do question how on earth the Pentagon screwed up the competition so badly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":17,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,67,12,36,17],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2572],"class_list":["post-37444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-editorial","category-industry","category-newsletters","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"DXYMDZVEF5BPDAABBN3YIB2RJY","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/2019\/05\/20\/is-this-a-jedi-mind-trick\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is this a JEDI mind trick? - Defense News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I don\u2019t question industry\u2019s ability to develop a secure, capable cloud infrastructure for the Pentagon. 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