Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition (bloomberg.com) 103
Citing corporate values, Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud-computing contract. Bloomberg reports: The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on October 12th. Google's announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. "We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
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Re: Welcome in China (Score:2)
Surely the people who created Google must already regret it?
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I support your statement brickhouse. I want to add that the GP is jumping to conclusions. IMHO the "cloud" is a bad place to keep secure information. This JEDI project is a dumb idea and probably comes with some ridiculous onerous conditions, particularly for a multinational company. If I were Google, I simply wouldn't want the project and I could burnish my "Do no evil" credentials at the same time by acting like my hands were too clean to touch it.
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Eh, I find that the most persistent delusion that humans nurture is that they are "good." Yeah, maybe they did that kind of unethical thing, but really they had no choice. (Except suffer consequences or not be as successful or be slightly inconvenienced.) My personal favorite was a woman who told me that Jesus spoke to her and that Jesus conveniently wanted all the things her id wanted.
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Re:Welcome in China (Score:5, Insightful)
"We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to your principles. But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government? I wish Google would expound on those principles, because they might be righteous and moralistic. Or they might be principles based on maximum profit. I wouldn't be surprised if the profits from Dragonfly (and the ability to operate in China) dwarf the slice of the $10 billion JEDI Google might have been contemplating.
"And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."
That sounds weird. So get those certifications or hire people with those certifications. Google can't get certified to work with the US government, but they have no problems getting certified to work with the Chinese government.
Google's PR department needs an upgrade. These "reasons" don't make Google look that great.
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But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government?
They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
It would have been an interesting story if they had found some compromise that the Chinese would accept and which they thought was overall a benefit to the Chinese people (the spread and democratisation of information is generally a good thing), but that did't happen so there isn't really anything to see here. By the time its existence was leaked it
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They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
That is quite a spun re-telling of what actually happened.
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But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government?
They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
Has Dragonfly been canceled? I haven't seen any news to suggest that. The quote I see is
That says that the project has not been canceled and that work is proceeding as before.
If the
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Google is a global company who has interests in most countries of the world. They have an office 15 minutes from me here in Norway and they are certainly spread out pretty much everywhere.
Supporting the USA and supporting the US military are two different things. The US military is an organization that exists primarily to give the US government and excuse to dump money into the economy and to remove youths from lower income tax brackets from the national unemployment statistics wh
Tl;dr translation: (Score:1)
Translation: I am not American, never met any Americans, nor know anything except Hollywood and socialist websites but I am fully qualified to rant about it from a superior position because I am a ultra leftist and therefore automatically smart.
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What a load of bullshit.
You can rant all you want about awesomely bad America is and how great Chinese communism is because they've somehow adopted capitalism but only in a way to take down the world market.
Y'see, it doesn't work that way bozo - Like all good communist countries it only works until they run out of other peoples money. Then they collapse again. You might've heard of a few of those countries like Venezuela? Brazil? Cuba's quite the economic powerhouse too.
You also seem to have convenientl
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I'm going to make the assumption that you're American.
Without the US military, you'd likely be speaking German, Japanese, or Russian by now. You seem to be insinuating that we don't need a military, to which I just don't know what to tell you other than that I've been in and around the military for over 40 years, and would gladly call bullshit. Yeah, the military has done some bad shit over time, and they should be called out on those issues. That doesn't mean that you don't need them.
Japan's support to
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How about getting reported to HR just because somebody heard you mention Donald Trump's name, even if you weren't speaking positively about him? Yes, that actually happened.
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How about getting reported to HR just because somebody heard you mention Donald Trump's name, even if you weren't speaking positively about him? Yes, that actually happened.
[Citation Needed]
Amazon (Score:1)
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They were always going to pick Amazon anyway. The "open bidding" process is a sham - they almost always are. They're designed to give the illusion of due diligence and the illusion of the government working to save money, but they always know the winner before they put the project up for bid. The DOD had already picked Amazon as the winner months ago, and this is just Google trying to save face by not submitting a bid they know they're going to lose.
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I can tell you that in this specific instance, the RFP was blatantly designed to be met by Amazon's AWS (or technically, their GovCloud fork of AWS) and no one else.
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Oh please. I've worked on military contracts for decades, and you're full of shit. Yes, there are cases where they sole source for various reasons, but that's the exception. I've even seen them compete long term contracts where there really was a most desirable vendor, by bringing in competitors, they're able to drive down that vendor's price.
Finding balance (Score:5, Funny)
"We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement."
That's okay. They can bid for the Strategic Intervention Taskforce Headquarters instead.
Re:Finding balance (Score:4, Funny)
From Google's point of view, the Jedi are evil.
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Maybe.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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"but we draw the line at actually killing people."
That's Waymo's job.
Competition (Score:1)
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Please, $10billion dollars isn't worth losing on the possible inability to buy the next startups they want. If the founders are idealists, they'll feel comfortable (and may even accept lower offers) selling to Google when they may have otherwise pushed against them.
Re: cloud equals mainframe (Score:2)
Actually I don't see the comparison. Plenty of years with mainframes, I do make a comparison between virtualization technology in it's present state and mainframes. Cloud is conceptually different. Sure it has the time sharing aspect via oversubscribing ofmcompute resources, but that's about as far as it goes to me.
This is ok? (Score:1)
But refuse to make a cake for someone and the mob left will run you out of business.
Core competency (Score:2)
Google exploits it's customers' data for further revenue opportunities. Not likely the Pentagon is going to allow this. So Google passes. Smart move.
unAmerican company, so no surprise (Score:1)
[1] Founded by a Russian [Brin]
[2] Current boss is from India [Pinchai] (Is he still an Indian citizen?, or perhaps dual?)
[3] Keeps trying to find a way to help China oppress billions of people.
[4] Keeps refusing to help the US military (without which the world would now live under global NAZIism or global totalitarian communism)
[5] Employs large numbers of foreign workers on H1-B visas.
[6] Fires people for expressing non-politically-correct [enforced leftism] viewpoints.
[7] Spies on people to an extent tha
Nice try Russian troll (Score:1)
I had personal friends who served on the Murmansk run.
For those with a poor education, that was a regular run of supplies and military equipment the US sent to soviet Russia by the US Navy and Merchant marines through frozen northern waters during WWII to keep them from being wiped out by the NAZIs, who they started the allied with. The USA provided the soviets with trucks, planes, artillery, ammunition, medicine, food and even ships... and in the end, the Russians reverse-engineered a lot of it and used th
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They announce they "choose" not to compete for this contract right at the same time they shutdown Google+ due to massive data breach. Related? I think so.
Yes, that must have affected dozens of people.
For ten billion (Score:2)
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$10bn for a military grade cloud system, secure and with high availability doesn't sound unreasonable. They will want their own secure data centres, probably hardened against physical attack as well as connected via dedicated lines to other military systems.
There are lots of additional costs to military grade hardware. Certifications, secure disposal, much higher levels of testing than normal server grade parts.
Which face of Google? (Score:3)
Google has gone from the 'Do No Evil' company to a Shit Company. How long until they are just plain evil? So with this story they have 'corporate values'. Really? What does that mean, when today we find out they had a massive data breach but decided not to notify the public because it would draw 'immediate regulatory scrutiny'. What it means is they carry around the flag of 'Do No Evil' and use it to hide all the evil things they actually are doing.
Google is scared of being regulated (Score:2)
This is probably their actual main reason for jumping out of this. Their fear of regulation is also why they were so late on informing the public about consumer data leaking out of Google+.
What principles? (Score:2)
Is there any secure cloud? (Score:1)
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Is there any cloud service in the world that is secure against hackers/malware?
Yes.
Step 1: Don't connect it to the regular Internet. And before you think that's unworkable, the DoD currently runs three "Internet" networks. NIPRNet, SIPRNet and JWICS.
Government on a "cloud"? Sounds great /s (Score:3)
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Moving government data onto servers that they have no control over sounds like an absolutely god-awful idea. Why would any company want to move to "cloud"-based storage? Are they forgetting that "the cloud" is just some guy's computer?
Companies only really care about the bottom line and the SLA. If a cloud company offers it for cheaper and has the terms and SLA that the company expects they can get with their own people (or better), then they'll take it. IME, Google probably backed out because they won't meet the government's terms for security and control. Google typically won't even discuss HIPAA terms in contracts. Along with the latest Google+ breach, they probably just aren't up to doing the security that the government is requiring
Shareholders (Score:2)