Pentagon cancels disputed JEDI contract, eyes Amazon, Microsoft

The contract for the US Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project became mired in legal challenges almost as soon as it was awarded to Microsoft in October 2019.

The United States Pentagon said Tuesday it cancelled a cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10bn. It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers. “With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD’s [US Department of Defense’s] capability gaps,” the Pentagon said in a statement. The statement did not directly mention that the Pentagon faced extended legal challenges by Amazon to the original $1m contract awarded to Microsoft. Amazon argued that the Microsoft award was tainted by politics, particularly then-President Donald Trump’s antagonism toward Amazon’s chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos. Bezos owns The Washington Post, a news outlet often criticised by Trump.