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WASHINGTON – As the Department of Defense prepares to solicit bids for cloud computing work that could bring Amazon billions of dollars, members of Congress raise new questions about the company’s efforts to win a contract $ 10 billion under the Trump administration.
Unpublished emails show Pentagon officials in 2017 and 2018 praised several of the tech executives whose companies have expressed interest in the initial deal, particularly Amazon, while concerns over access from the company appears to have been ignored, according to emails, other documents and interviews.
Two Republican lawmakers who pushed to curb the dominance of Amazon and other tech companies in consumer markets are using the emails as evidence that Amazon has unfairly used its influence by competing for taxpayer-funded contracts.
Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah have asked Amazon to testify under oath on “whether it tried to unduly influence the biggest federal contract in history,” the $ 10 billion project dollar called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, which would move the Pentagon’s computer networks to the cloud. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
Whatever influence Amazon had in the Trump-era Pentagon, the effect was limited. And the company also had a very high profile antagonist: President Donald J. Trump, who during his tenure regularly assaulted then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post. Amazon ultimately lost the JEDI contract, which was awarded to Microsoft in 2019, prompting questions as to whether Mr. Trump’s hostility to Amazon played a role in the outcome.
But, in a win for Amazon, the contract was canceled by the Pentagon this month amid a controversial award legal battle between Amazon, Microsoft and other tech companies. The Defense Department immediately announced that it was launching a revised cloud program that could result in contracts for Amazon, Microsoft and possibly other companies, sparking what is expected to be an intense lobby fight.
Recently published emails and interviews with people familiar with the events described provide insight into the evolving relationship between the Department of Defense and major tech companies at a time when the Pentagon is increasingly shifting its focus. from airplanes, tanks and other hardware to software and initiatives involving artificial intelligence and machine learning.
They show how, in the months leading up to the fight against JEDI, senior Pentagon officials and Silicon Valley executives indulged in a court of admiration that led to high-level access for some of the companies who would express more late their interest in the contract. Tech executives used this access to urge Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary, to embrace cloud-based technology and, in at least one case, promote their own company technology.
On a trip to the West Coast in the summer of 2017 to meet with executives from Apple, Amazon and Google, Mr. Mattis became uncomfortable when he was subjected to a product demonstration. cloud computing at the company’s Seattle headquarters during what he expected. would be a more general discussion of cloud technology, according to documents and a former senior Pentagon official who is familiar with the meeting.
The former official said the protest brought together Mr Bezos, with whom Mr Mattis had just met one-on-one, and a number of his lieutenants, and was led by an executive responsible for selling products from the area. ‘Amazon Web Services, or AWS. , to governments.
Backgrounders prepared for Mr. Mattis ahead of the meeting stated that “this will not be a sales pitch”, with “no” underlined for emphasis.
But immediately after the meeting, an aide to Mr. Mattis wrote in an email to another Pentagon official that the session “seemed to turn into an AWS sales pitch.” Mr Mattis “was kind and courteous but didn’t get a good vibe from it,” the assistant wrote, adding that the one-on-one session before the protest with Mr Bezos “seemed to be going very well “and that the founder of Amazon and the Secretary of Defense” seemed to click on a personal level. “
The competition for the JEDI contract quickly got bogged down in bitter bickering. IBM protested the request for proposal, suggesting it favored Amazon, while Oracle alleged Pentagon officials had conflicts of interest related to Amazon. When the contract passed to Microsoft instead, Amazon took legal action to block it, arguing that the Trump administration had interfered with the procurement process because of Mr. Trump’s enmity towards Mr. Bezos.
An investigation by the Defense Department’s Inspector General dismissed the gravest allegations that Amazon and Pentagon officials improperly tilted the contracting process towards the company.
In a report last year, the Inspector General concluded that the outcome of the JEDI contract was not affected by Mr. Trump’s attacks on Amazon or by the company’s ties to the Department of Defense. .
But the report omitted expressions of concern about the demonstration of a “sales pitch” for Mr. Mattis at Amazon headquarters, as well as the language of an email exchange in which a Pentagon official told two close advisers to Mr. Mattis that the Chief Defense Secretary’s staff “is in” their hands whether or not to accept Amazon’s request for a Pentagon meeting between Mr. Bezos and Mr. . Mattis.
One of the close advisers, Sally Donnelly, replied that Mr. Bezos “is the genius of our time, so why not”. Ms. Donnelly had worked in the Department of Defense during the Obama administration before setting up a consulting firm in 2012 where her clients included Amazon. This meeting does not appear to have taken place, and Ms. Donnelly subsequently testified to the Inspector General that she was “flippant” and that Mr. Mattis’ chief of staff – not Ms. Donnelly – decided on the meetings to be held. take.
But less than two days after her email calling Mr. Bezos a genius, Ms. Donnelly gave a list of seven reasons why Mr. Mattis should meet him. He understood that Amazon had hired “many” former US government intelligence experts, that its cloud security “was so convincing” to the CIA “that two years ago the agency made the surprising decision to migrate most of his secure work to Amazon, “and that Mr. Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post has given him” an influence beyond the business world. “
The Inspector General’s office did not respond to questions about specific line omissions in the emails, or whether those omissions left an incomplete picture of interactions between the Pentagon and Amazon.
“Our JEDI Cloud Procurement report speaks for itself – we stand by our findings and conclusions,” Dwrena K. Allen, spokesperson for the Inspector General, said in a statement.
Michael N. Levy, attorney for Ms. Donnelly, said in a statement that she “has always adhered to all ethical and legal obligations and has acted in the best interests of the national security of the United States.”
His efforts to organize meetings for Mr. Mattis and other tech executives were “part of the Defense Department’s critical efforts to transform into the digital age,” Mr. Levy said.
The emails – which date from 2017 and 2018 – were published in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a former Defense Department inspector general against the department and its inspector general. The events described there predate the Pentagon’s official request for offers on the JEDI contract.
The emails show that Mattis associates also lavish praise on CEOs of other companies.
Ms Donnelly called Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, “one of the industry’s ‘thought leaders’ and one of the country’s foremost American Indians” and said he was important for Mr. Mattis to meet with Mr. Nadella to demonstrate impartiality.
Another contributor, whose name is redacted in the emails, wrote that Milo Medin, a Google executive Mr. Mattis met on his 2017 trip to the west coast, was “awesome.”
Mr Mattis’ meeting with Apple’s Tim Cook was “equally strong,” the aide wrote, noting that the two “seemed to have clicked personally, Cook said he was eager to help as he needed. could (and seemed to think so) “. The assistant concluded that “a positive note of the trip is that everyone” in the different companies “seemed to carry a sincere ‘patriotic’ air. I think that might have surprised the boss a bit.
A month after the trip, the Pentagon released a memo titled “Accelerating Business Adoption of the Cloud.”
Mr Buck, who worked on a bipartisan set of bills passed by the Judiciary Committee last month aimed at weakening Big Tech’s dominance, joined Mr Lee in sending a letter to Mr Bezos in May. suggesting that Amazon was attempting to “monopolize one or more markets related to government and / or commercial cloud computing services by inappropriately influencing the procurement process of companies’ joint defense infrastructure.” “
They asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Amazon “could have violated federal conflict of interest and antitrust laws.” And they accused the Inspector General of the Defense Ministry of covering up irregularities related to Amazon’s bid for the JEDI contract.
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