at Our Exorbitant Expense
Most of us know the expression “Stop biting the hand that feeds you.”
Republicans have a long history of flipping that script – and feeding the hands that bite them.
We’ve had various times during the past several decades where Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency – and yet Republicans continue to have government fund the Leftism that seeks to destroy them.
The list is long: Non-essential government personnel, government unions, Planned Parenthood, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, environmentalist whack job groups, ridiculous colleges and universities and their ridiculous studies, and on, and on, and….
Thankfully, a few of these nonsensical government-money-recipients only receive relatively small grants. Too many receive huge wages and extravagant benefits.
But the hugest government coin – is in contracting. But most Leftists are completely incapable of doing anything useful – and therefore can not qualify for these most massive dollar deals.
That is – until the Tech Revolution took over the world. Just about everything digital – is created and run by Leftists. The Silicon Valley REALLY loathes anyone to the right of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.
So for the first time ever, really – Leftists are getting in on the really huge government contracting coin. So they can REALLY take it to anyone to the right of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Currently, the Leftist leading the government-money-receiving charge – is Jeff Bezos and his Amazon. Bezos-Amazon are cashing multiple huge government checks – for their cloud computing services.
And Bezos – really, REALLY loathes Donald Trump:
“There is no greater antagonist of the Trump Administration than Jeff Bezos. Mr. Bezos personally helped lead that court fight in Washington state against the President’s travel ban and has opposed virtually every important policy initiative proposed by the Trump Administration, from immigration to regulatory relief.
“And the #FakeNews Amazon Washington Post has been the single largest thorn in the Administration’s side as the president has attempted to move forward with his electorally-mandated agenda.”
Back during the Bezos-crony Barack Obama Administration, Amazon benefitted thusly:
The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon: “A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a ‘radical departure’ for the risk-averse intelligence community.”
But the federal government was only getting it’s Amazon-check-stroking arm warmed up.
Enter the Donald Trump Administration – which has bizarrely continued to feed the Bezos hand that bites them.
Pentagon’s Next Cloud Contract Could Be Worth Billions: “The Defense Department intends to award a cloud computing contract next year that could disrupt the entire federal market….
“According to an internal strategy document…the Pentagon aims to award a 10-year cloud computing contract – potentially worth billions – to a single company by the fourth quarter of 2018.
“The contract would call on one commercial cloud service provider to host unclassified, secret and top secret Defense Department data, and the Pentagon’s approach mirrors the CIA’s enterprise-wide approach to cloud four years ago, which resulted in a 10-year, $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services.”
Wait a second – “a single company?” “One commercial cloud service provider?”
Monopolizing Defense Department cloud service is an awful idea – for several different reasons.
One provider – is going to inherently become complacent. And slack off in attending to short-term needs – and innovating long-term betterments. One provider with a ten-year contract – is thus a REALLY bad idea.
And any sort of ten-year contract in Tech – is egregiously awful. A decade in Tech – is an eon in evolutionary terms. If you’ve got inherent complacency – in the Tech world, for a decade – you end up with REALLY bad problems.
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You want a much shorter-term contract for any government service. For Tech – year-to-year is probably the best way to go.
And you want multiple providers – each offering overlapping portions of the Defense Department’s very many needs. Again, for a variety of reasons.
One reason: You have multiple providers constantly competing with each other – to constantly provide the best possible service. No complacency there.
And then there are the national security implications.
If you have but one provider – and it suffers a service interruption – the entire Defense Department suffers service interruption.
And for our military men and women serving in some really bad areas around the globe – service interruptions can and will be deadly.
The Defense Department should build-in to their cloud computing what they build-in to just about everything else they do – multiple redundancies.
Defense should have at least two providers providing each portion of the cloud service – so that if one crashes, you have at least one at-the-ready backup.
So, say, at a bare minimum: Five providers – each providing 40% of the necessary services. For government school victims – that makes 200%. Which means two providers each are providing every part of the total cloud service.
Backup. Fail-safe. Redundancy.
Not one provider – all by its onesies, providing all of the service.
IT Companies Press Pentagon to Pick More Than One Winner in Cloud Competition
It ain’t just IT companies.
And guess who got the ten-year, $100 billion, monopoly gig?
Amazon Scored Billions of Dollars in Cloud Computing
And Amazon’s monopoly contract is turning out to be as highly problematic – as anyone paying any attention at all would expect.
The Amazon Monopoly Built On The Swamp Threatens National Security: “Why would the DoD do such a seemingly obvious and dangerous thing? It didn’t happen in a vacuum. Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, in recent years has created a powerful lobbying arm to influence Washington….
“The Defense Innovation Board (is) chaired by Jeff Bezos and fellow Clinton supporter and Google Executive, Eric Schmidt, is staffed by ‘Presidential Innovation Fellows.’ These ‘Fellows’ have great power to influence the choices of how government spends its money on the tech of the future.”
Get that? These “Fellows” are – as indicated by Leftist Chairs Bezos and Schmidt – Obama Administration holdovers. Trump’s biggest mistake remains – his not making MANY more people leave DC upon his arrival.
Amazon got these massive sweetheart monopoly deals – thanks to Obama Administration cronyism. Including – after the Obama Administration ended.
Enemies of Trump Killing Competition in D.C. Swamp: “Are Obama holdovers still allowed to funnel contracts to liberal allies and funders of the Democratic Party? Just last week, the Air Force granted Amazon a sole source award for the Air Force Materiel Command, on three days’ notice and with no competition….
“The fact is that the Trump Administration is still filled with Obama-era technology holdovers filling the ranks of GSA’s taxpayer-funded software development corporation ‘18f,’ the White House’s taxpayer-funded technology consultancy, the United States Digital Service (USDS), and numerous digital services around the government.”
You can’t swing a dead cat – without hitting some additional Obama-holdover cronyism:
“The original agreement, signed in February, tasked Rean Cloud, LLC with enabling multiple agencies within the Defense Department to procure cloud solutions in a new streamlined process, but was immediately criticized by some in industry who feared the Pentagon was playing favorites.…
“Rean is an Amazon Web Services partner and reseller.”
So an Amazon company…chose Amazon.
Shocker. How very DC.
Amazon – run by Bezos. One of the world’s largest anti-Trump zealots.
How – sadly, still – very DC.
Thankfully, the all-things-Amazon-monopoly are already starting to raise red flags.
Pentagon’s First Look at Multi-Billion Dollar Cloud Program Leaves Many Unsatisfied
And, thankfully, is already leading to some reductions.
DoD Backs Off Cloud Contract with Amazon: “Defense Department spokesman Col. Robert Manning announced March 5 that the contract’s new ceiling will be $65,000,000, a significant reduction from the original five-year $950,000,000 and that the scope of the work will be limited.”
Well that’s a bit of good news. But it isn’t nearly enough. We need fundamental reform of how the government chooses these things.
Which begins with ridding ourselves of the very many Leftist government embeds.
We’ll very quickly begin making MUCH better decisions.
Dear Donald Trump:
Stop feeding the hands that bite you. It’s not only good politics – it is eminently better policy.
Our armed forces’ men and women – and our national security – will be all the better for it.
This first appeared in Red State.