The Pentagon announced Tuesday it is canceling a controversial $10 billion cloud computing contract the Trump Administration signed with Microsoft, and instead it will pursue a joint project with both Microsoft and Amazon, the Associated Press reports.
Amazon has brought multiple legal suits against the federal government, claiming that the contracting process was tainted by Donald Trump’s animosity toward Jeff Bezos, the recently-retired CEO and founder of Amazon who is also the owner of the Washington Post.
Amazon Web Services had been considered the leading candidate to get the contract for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI, which would provide secure cloud storage for the vast amounts of data the Pentagon uses for operations and war planning.
The original contract, which was awarded in October 2019 for one million dollars, was awarded to Microsoft after a series of defamatory statements and tweets by Trump. Amazon immediately filed lawsuits against the federal government claiming Trump unfairly influenced the contracting process.
“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 capability gaps,” the Pentagon said in a statement.