Testimony by the Pentagon’s top IT official on Capitol Hill Oct. 29 highlighted the department’s continued struggle to explain and assuage concerns about its new enterprise cloud.
At his confirmation hearing, Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s CIO, was asked to explain several details about the DoD’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, ranging from the basics of the cloud and security to alleged pressure applied by President Donald Trump. On Oct. 25, the Pentagon awarded the contract to Microsoft, which beat out Amazon Web Services for the potential 10-year, $10 billion contract.
But some attention to the cloud centered on revelations made in a new book that President Trump, who has a longstanding feud with Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, ordered then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to “screw” Amazon and award the contract elsewhere. In the hearing, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, asked Deasy if he could “categorically assure” that the president or the White House didn’t sway the final decision.
