
It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now - us0r
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-more-powerful-in-dc-than-trump
======
oliverx0
Seems a bit too tailored though - "To even make a bid, a provider must
maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers, a
prerequisite that only Amazon can currently meet. JEDI also asks for “32 GB of
RAM”—the precise specification of Amazon’s services. (Microsoft, by contrast,
offers only 28 GB, and Google provides 30 GB.) In places, JEDI echoes Amazon’s
own language: It calls for a “ruggedized” storage system, the same word Amazon
uses to tout its Snowball Edge product."

~~~
bilbo0s
Guys, please, try to be reasonable here.

150 miles is not an insert for Amazon. I'm not a general, but even I can see
that 150 miles is military sense.

~~~
lmm
150 specifically just happens to be the military requirement? Not 100 or 200,
but 150, which just happens to be the distance that Amazon offers?

~~~
PunchTornado
? it is a minimum of 150 miles. And no, this is not the distance that Amazon
offers, Google and Azure also can match this offer.

------
wmf
If anybody wants to go to the source:
[https://www.fbo.gov/index?tab=documents&tabmode=form&subtab=...](https://www.fbo.gov/index?tab=documents&tabmode=form&subtab=core&tabid=48834ebc53422026828dc19dc681a6d2)

I skimmed through some of this and I don't see anything obviously rigged for
AWS. There are mentions of 32GB VMs, but it doesn't say they have to be
exactly 32GB. I found the 150-mile requirement but it also doesn't look AWS-
specific. The description of the ruggedized "tactical edge" device doesn't
sound identical to the existing Snowball Edge.

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youdontknowtho
Everyone seems focused on the numbers 32GB or 150 miles...Amazon has moved
into lobbying in a big way. That is the actual story. Bigger than major
investment banks. Bezos owns the only paper in Washington that actually does
journalism. People involved with Amazon and the head of the DOD have been
instrumental in crafting the proposal for JEDI.

Just because you learned AWS and it's been good for your resume doesn't mean
that they aren't being underhanded in D.C.

If you are going to be a fan boy about it, then you should be excited that
they seem to be outmaneuvering established players in the federal sector.
That's what's happening.

This isn't "they built a better mousetrap", this is "they hired all the people
that are ever asked about mousetraps, and they changed the language that you
have to use to ask for a mousetrap, and they took over one of the better
outlets that runs stories about fraud in the mousetrap business. Oh and their
commodity mousetrap business is one of three equally good ones."

I know that you think AWS is WAY better and that it makes a difference. It
doesn't. Azure and GCP are just as good for most of the things that people are
building these days. Sure there are differences, but it's a commodity market.

------
fipple
A $2 billion minimum size for a vendor getting a $10 billion contract is
perfectly reasonable.

~~~
bilbo0s
More than reasonable. Not awarding the contract to an organization with the
requisite scale would be cause for investigating the process.

In my mind, the likelihood is that people would complain no matter who got
this contract. If it went to Microsoft, the article would be about all the
high ranking contacts between Microsoft and the Pentagon. As a pragmatic
matter, any organization with the expertise and scale to realistically execute
this contract will have deep connections with the Pentagon. At several levels.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yup, and same with Google, with the extra spookiness that has been surrounding
Google for a while. And Facebook, but then there'd be a riot.

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partiallypro
Why would such a massively important backbone of US defense want to rely on
only a single provider? It should be using all 3 of the major players (or
others) and even some on premise stuff. This seems like a nightmare waiting to
happen, and crony capitalism at its finest. The fact that Amazon says in the
article that using fail overs to other providers is some hassle...is just
amazing.

~~~
Spivak
Because government contracts of this size play by different rules. They're not
using Amazon as a customer like normal companies -- they're hiring Amazon the
firm to build something specific for them.

~~~
partiallypro
A government contract where the sole company that can ever win the contract
also says that fail overs to other providers is bad. So if Amazon goes down,
the DoD is shit out of luck. I don't see how that's not a national security
problem. Not only that, but after the $10 Billion is expended the DoD is
vendor locked. How people don't see this as a major problem/cronyism is
baffling. The vendor lock itself is bad enough.

~~~
deadbunny
Hows it any different from every other single provider contract ever?
Everything's in an IBM DC (or three), they fuck something up? It's down.

~~~
partiallypro
Because in this case it relates to national security and if the provider goes
down the US is potentially at more risk than it would have been if it had
multi-vendor fail overs. I can understand it not being justified for some
government programs or companies due to expense or impracticality, but the DoD
has a massive budget and a huge pool of resources. Not having multi-vendor
fail overs just seems irresponsible given the stakes.

~~~
deadbunny
Basically every mil contract is single provider. Doesn't matter who the
provider.

~~~
partiallypro
Having a single provider of Lockheed for 1 jet is different than an entire
infrastructure that can fail.

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tzs
> To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150
> miles between its data centers, a prerequisite that only Amazon can
> currently meet

I don't get this one.

Azure's government data centers are in Virginia, Iowa, Arizona, and Texas.
Their DoD data centers are Virginia and Iowa. I don't know where they are in
those specific states, but the only pair that could be less than 150 miles
apart are Texas and Arizona, and that is only if the Arizona one is within a
few miles of the SE corner of Arizona and the Texas one is up in the NW sort-
of corner of Texas.

~~~
PunchTornado
the author doesn't know what's going on. Google also meets those requirements
easily.

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forapurpose
FWIW, it's a long-time, standard complaint by the losers that the specs were
written in a way that favored the winner. On one hand, it's an obvious tactic
for insiders to favor certain outsiders.

On the other, of course the winner has capabilities that better suit the specs
- that's the goal of competitive bidding and we should hope that it's true of
all winning bidders. So the fact that the winner's capabilities match the
specs well doesn't tell us anything; if they didn't match well, it would be
signal of corruption in the selection process.

~~~
partiallypro
On the other hand doesn't match much with reality, and "regulatory capture" is
well documented and it seems that is exactly what has happened here. The big
3, AWS, GSC and Azure should all three be used, at the very least as fail
overs.

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nova22033
This is a bad article. Is there any other cloud provider who has a cloud
offering certified to hold top secret/secret data?

~~~
Analemma_
Azure is certified for Secret data, but not Top Secret AFAIK.

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jonknee
Amazon being in line to win a large government contract while the President
openly despises Amazon is actually a testament to proper government
procurement. The real scandal would be if the President ordered Amazon to not
be considered because of his personal beef with the Washington Post (and IMO
general jealousy regarding Bezos who is actually as successful as Trump has
always dreamed of being).

tl;dr It is not a scandal that the leading cloud provider is in the pole
position for a large cloud contract.

~~~
username3
Or he wants Amazon and pretending beef.

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amaccuish
More concerning is the fact that the UK government is happy to store UK data
in the US with AWS under its "G-cloud" scheme. At least the US guys have
picked a "local" vendor.

~~~
danpalmer
G-cloud is a pretty broad scheme that covers all sorts of computing services
and consulting at all levels of secrecy. It's a marketplace with many
different uses.

If you do a search with, for example, a minimum provider staff security
clearance of DV (which is pretty high, would apply to many matters of national
security), all the major cloud providers disappear from the results, and you
get smaller companies based in the UK, who use UK datacenters, and who are
seemingly adding their own layers of encryption on top.

~~~
jstanley
Is the interface for such a search publicly accessible?

~~~
culturestate
This[1] is the first Google result for "g cloud provider search" \- I believe
it's what GP is referencing.

1\.
[https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/buyers/direct-...](https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/buyers/direct-
award/g-cloud/start)

~~~
danpalmer
Correct.

Again, this is all publicly accessible because 99% of the use is not the
intelligence services or military, it's instead random government departments,
local government offices, hospitals, doctors surgeries, etc. This is designed
to replace most computing purchasing in the UK public sector.

------
ryanmarsh
I have DoD clients currently doing app dev on new and replacement (for legacy)
systems. This writers attempt at making the DoD contract look like a
conspiracy is infuriating. The developer experience in the current data center
ecosystem is toxic. The infrastructure and insecurity woes compound daily. I
don’t care how much Bezos makes, he has a great product and DoD, nay the
country, need this. GovCloud would be ice water for people in hell.

I’m mad about this because this affects individual contributors, on up to the
country at large. Currently money is wasted and systems are built in
ridiculous ways. Imagine each sub program in a branch of service rolling it’s
own IAM. That’s just a glimpse at what’s going on. The undifferentiated heavy
lifting is unfathomable.

Before you respond with virtue signaling about war know that most DoD software
is for logistics. Done better it boils down to not wasting tax payer money.

~~~
Analemma_
The important thing to realize is that this is par for the course with huge
government contracts. There is always rancorous mudslinging, submarine
stories, etc.

The reality is probably that Amazon _is_ using some shady tactics to try and
close this deal, but so are all the other bidders (it's not like Microsoft,
who is probably the second-most likely to win JEDI, doesn't have an extensive
set of Pentagon connections too). This is just how the game is played and
you've gotta roll with it. Eventually this will be awarded one way or the
other and we'll all move on.

~~~
count
Another thing to look at: Microsoft is almost definitely going to land DoD/IC-
wide O365. AWS taking IaaS compute might be the way of giving both Seattle
juggernauts some love.

------
leoc
Ah, so this is why Amazon is evidently making a big hiring push for people
with Top Secret clearances, right? [https://www.amazon.jobs/en-
gb/landing_pages/AWSClearedVets](https://www.amazon.jobs/en-
gb/landing_pages/AWSClearedVets)

------
te_chris
With that sort of budget, surely the govt. could setup it's own cloud
provider?

------
thosakwe
There you have it folks - another large corporation gaining political power.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
What's your comprehensive alternative?

If you _" want to do something BIG"_, that _" BIG"_ thing is, by definition,
going to have an impact. That is to say, it will exert some form of _power_.
And you're probably going to have to do that with other people. Probably in
the form of a corporation.

~~~
maxsilver
> What's your comprehensive alternative?

Why can't they build this themselves? If the DoD is such a large customer, has
such precise needs and requirements, they should build their own datacenters
with their own staff and manage it in-house.

> (snip) And you're probably going to have to do that with other people.
> Probably in the form of a corporation.

The government manages a nuclear arsenal and a space flight program. There's
no valid reason they couldn't build and run their own server farm without
giving it all away to Amazon/Microsoft/Google/Oracle. There's no good reason
_everything_ in the entire nation has to be privatized like this.

~~~
stale2002
Well,sure they COULD build it.

But maybe that would cost 2-3-4 times as much as buying it?

Why shouldn't they instead go with the best in the world?

Presumably, the whole reason why they are doing this, is because they DID
build it themselves a decade or so ago, and it didn't result in the best
outcome.

Government IT has quite a terrible reputation these days. The government
should instead be pushing to have the best in the world.

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the-pigeon
"without the guy in the White House even batting an eye."

Do they not read Trump's Twitter? He's complained about Amazon and Bezos a
ton.

~~~
gumby
I think that's the point: despite these complaints he said nothing about this.
Though why anyone would even mention it to him is beyond me.

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clay_the_ripper
While this does seem like an insiders rigged game, is that necessarily bad?
Business is about relationships. It’s has always been this way and will always
continue to be this way. People do business with people they know and like.
While the govt is not technically a business as such, awarding a contract is
still a business transaction. If the DOD know and trust people at amazon to do
a good job, then why shouldn’t amazon get the contract? AWS is an industry
leader (if not the leader? Somebody correct me) who obviously knows a great
deal about doing a project of this magnitude. It seems to me they would
probably do as good a job as any of the other candidates (which seems to be
realistically azure or google cloud) so I don’t really see why this is a bad
thing.

TLDR: amazon knows people at dod, they decide to do business together, who
cares?

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joejerryronnie
I'm pretty sure I saw Bezos and Mattis, on two separate news feeds,
simultaneously make a secret Freemason hand signal.

~~~
vadym909
care to explain this please?

~~~
batiudrami
it's just a joke mate

------
justicezyx
Turns out Oracle's complaints do have merits, contrary to normal emotional
responses.

~~~
samstave
And what are their complaints?

Given that Oracle only ___exists_ __as a company due to the fact that they
built one of the first /earliest RDMSs for the CIA makes me not shed many
tears for them...

Also, what is Palantir up to these days?

