Esper defends Pentagon contract disputed by Amazon, says it 'was done fairly'

U.S. Defense secretary Mark Esper on Friday said he believes that the awarding of a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft was done fairly. He defended the Pentagon contract disputed by Amazon as fair when he was asked about the controversy at a news conference on Friday in Seoul.

Was their government bias?

The Pentagon decided to award the contract to Microsoft earlier in October and Amazon decided that it had seen unmistakable bias on the government's part in awarding the contract to Microsoft, bypassing Amazon in the process. Before the bid began, Esper had recused himself from the process because his son had previously worked for one of the unsuccessful bidders. He said he was confident that the procedure was conducted fairly and freely without any outside influence or government bias. 

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Amazon will challenge the decision

In its statement, Amazon said that numerous aspects of the bidding process involved clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias. While it did not elaborate on these biases, these are serious allegations to be made against the Pentagon.

The project formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, pitted leading tech titans Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and IBM against each other. JEDI will store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the U.S. military to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

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Amazon was for the longest time believed to be the front runner because their web services division is far ahead of Microsoft. Also, Amazon has previous experience in handling government data. But it lost to Microsoft after having survived earlier legal challenges where the Defense Department eliminated Oracle and IBM and whittled the competition to the two Seattle-area tech giants. It is not uncommon for losing bidders to claim foul play and challenge the decision, but it will be a challenge to prove foul play and government bias.