The Department of Defense (DoD) said on Friday that it had issued “formal solicitations” to Microsoft — which has just announced plans to build its own metaverse — and three other companies regarding the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. The news comes after years of legal battles, scrapped programs, and disagreements between tech companies desperate to get their names stamped on the lucrative government program.
JEDI Fighting
In 2017, the Pentagon began to formulate plans for a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, with the goal to commission a company to build a centralized cloud infrastructure system that could be used to view, manage, and transfer confidential information safely across all security clearance levels, for all employees — from the Pentagon to the edge of the battlefield. In July, the Pentagon announced that it was scrapping the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract that had previously been awarded to Microsoft, on the grounds it was now obsolete due to long delays.
JWCC: A New Hope?
The Pentagon has stiff criteria for what it expects to be developed, including “tactical edge devices,” pieces of technology used in battle scenarios or crisis environments that can function away from data centers and work for employees at all levels of government. Google has, since July, instituted the security provisions needed to be in the running for a cloud service, but didn’t previously bid for JEDI because it was thought the contract would conflict with its AI principles. IBM is also rumored to be interested in playing some part.
Should Big Tech be Building a ‘War Cloud’?
The disconnect between the wealthy executives populating Big Tech’s boardrooms and the staff that make their companies’ cogs turn has peppered the news over the past few years. With workers’ rights and user safety already bones of contention that have been borne out in the public domain, the development of a “war cloud” may be the frontier upon which disagreement manifests. Google employees also protested the company’s involvement in a drone program that utilized AI to improve accuracy, and a year later, Microsoft employees expressed their concern after their company was awarded a $480 million contract to develop augmented reality headsets for troops in combat zones. It remains to be seen how the staff-exec relationships at these companies will fare under the strain of new, ethical quandaries like company involvement with military programs, but one thing’s for sure: it’ll take a lot more than an appeal to the better nature of Big Tech’s profit-chasing chiefs to force them to turn down multi-billion-dollar contracts.
