Judge: Amazon 'Likely To Succeed' on Key Issue in Pentagon Lawsuit (thehill.com) 24
A federal judge said in court documents that Amazon's protest lawsuit over rival Microsoft being awarded a highly lucrative defense project was "likely to succeed on the merits" of one of its main arguments. From a report: In October, Microsoft was awarded the Pentagon's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing contract after the Trump administration and other lawmakers intervened on the tech giant's behalf. The document provides some insight into how U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith might rule on the case. To the chagrin of Microsoft and the Department of Defense, Campbell-Smith last month halted production on the JEDI cloud system, saying in her decision that the Pentagon erred in how it evaluated prices for competing proposals from the two tech companies.
Misleading synopsis (Score:5, Insightful)
They're likely to be able to prove one very narrow part of one of their claims. That gets them to trial. It doesn't mean as much as the headline wording implies.
The point they're likely to be able to "prove" is largely irrelevant; they're saying that the wording of the requirements are not precisely met by the proposal that the government chose, but the government says that it did meet the requirements; that Amazon is misunderstanding them; and that the thing they chose does the thing they meant when they added the requirement.
So what Amazon will have proven was that the specification was written in error. But the error isn't substantive.
Re: Misleading synopsis (Score:2)
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Sure, of course. They're not entitled to be selected just because they're the best and that's what the law says the requirement for the job is. Makes perfect sense. Law of surprise rules all, right? /sarcasm
(You're an ass.)
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That, and he got his relatively new toady at Sec. Def. to "recuse" himself because his son worked for IBM and IBM wasn't in the running.
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Given how corrupt government procurement tends to be these days, that wording was probably deliberately crafted to throw the deal to MS. I don't see how Amazon would ever prove that, however. Looks like MS gave the right amount of money to the right people.
Re:Misleading synopsis (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I thought it was the other way around. Everyone thought that the contract was going to go to Amazon because the requirements were written specifically for AWS.
Which is why Amazon is so up-in-arms right now... because the rigged game was thrown.
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Not much more.
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Re:Misleading synopsis (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how the government contracting thing is done these days on the big contracts. IF you lose the competitive bid you just automatically protest. It doesn't matter if the protest has any actual basis of importance, just file the paperwork and hire a room full of lawyers to sift through the mountains of paperwork and see if you can find something, a jot or tittle that is out of place in the details. Then your lawyers make as big of a deal out of everything they can find or twist into a reason to rebid.
In the mean time, you get to see all the competitive bids because your lawyers get all the documents for every thing. Then knowing how the bids are rated you can construct a new bid that is more likely to win. Rinse, lather, repeat until you fail the court case or win the bid.
This happens all the time on all sorts of contracts and the bigger the contract the more likely it is to draw a protest from somebody. I'm not sure how you stop this abuse of the civil courts, but something needs to be done.
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If you lose a bid and the president/governor has been constantly attacking your company mainly because the CEO is also the CEO of another company who happened to state some not so nice things about him. Then Yes you probably have a case against losing that bid.
Most companies and functioning adults have the ability to compartmentalize for their best self interests. There are people in my job who I don't like, they probably don't like me. However we can work well on a job because we compartmentalize our d
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Oh please. Presidents of both parties have over the years been publicly critical of companies bidding on government contracts and nobody brought up the possibility of impropriety.
To imply that Trump even knew about the contract process, what it meant or that he as an individual could shift the bureaucratic momentum behind it is absurd. They can't both be an idiot and also manipulating contracts for cloud providers. Idiots don't know what the cloud is.
Now, that doesn't mean the government didn't intentionall
Re:Misleading synopsis (Score:5, Insightful)
To imply that Trump even knew about the contract process, what it meant or that he as an individual could shift the bureaucratic momentum behind it is absurd. They can't both be an idiot and also manipulating contracts for cloud providers. Idiots don't know what the cloud is.
Absurd? Did Fox News discuss the contract? They did, so Trump knows about it. It doesn't matter if that particular idiot knows what the cloud is. He recognizes names and can match them to his enemies list. It doesn't matter in the slightest what the contract is actually for. It could be a contract for fucking Cheerios in the Pentagon cafeteria. If Fox told Trump about it, he'd interfere.
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Amazon had already written the RFQ and it was highly anticipated in 2017/2018 they would get the contract because Bezos was wining and dining Mattis back then and Bezos himself was on the decision board at the Pentagon. This is just bureaucrat catfights in the deep state and spans more than just one presidency.
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But in the end, the Pentagon just asked the Joint Chiefs, "which one is better for America?" And they chose one of their existing trusted suppliers.
A good proposal isn't enough to win this sort of contract. You have to start smaller, build trust in the sector.
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If you lose a bid and the president/governor has been constantly attacking your company mainly because the CEO is also the CEO of another company who happened to state some not so nice things about him. Then Yes you probably have a case against losing that bid.
And if you go read the judge's order, you will eventually notice that this issue isn't even being discussed as a possible reason for this to go to trial...In fact only ONE of Amazon's arguments where deemed worthy of both the injunction and taking the issue to trial. It is item 5 in Amazon's list and the judge is absolutely clear that the rest of their arguments don't have any merit, except this one, which has everything to do with the class of storage used in one pricing scenario. Unless you think Trump'
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Give `em a break, on Matlock it would be a winning argument. How are they supposed to know?
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Fighting a loss is nothing new, and I am not convinced we are seeing a big new surge.... but I do suspect we are seeing a big surge in covering it.
Re:Misleading synopsis (Score:4, Informative)
So what Amazon will have proven was that the specification was written in error. But the error isn't substantive.
Well, as I read the judge's ruling, this has to do with type of storage selected by the plaintiff was more expensive than the type selected by the contract winner. (Amazon used "online" storage and apparently the less expensive "readily available" was accepted). Amazon's claim that the specification of this storage indicated that the more expensive option that Amazon used was actually required and that Microsoft's use of lesser storage should not have been accepted. But we are basically talking about the difference between actively spinning storage on a raid array, verses being stored on a low performance drive that isn't always spinning, backed up by a tape archive.
This is pretty thin.... However, apparently the Judge has agreed that Amazon has a valid point, that the specification wasn't written where the lesser cost storage in the winning bid was acceptable. The problem here is that amazon is arguing about a small price differential of a very few "scenarios" that where used to model the project costs. It's kind of hard to divine from the court's order if they will succeed, only that it's POSSIBLE. Amazon's lawyers will get to argue their case in court, so they are feverishly mashing buttons on their calculators going though all sorts of scenarios trying to prove Amazon is cheaper.
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Right, but the problem of the specification having an error is pretty easy for the government to resolve.
It comes down to; if had been written correctly, would the decision have been different. And the government gets to answer that, they have deference that a private party wouldn't have.
It is unlikely that a re-evaluation would be ordered in that case. If that happens, that's going to put the Pentagon in a bad mood though, they want these capabilities to get deployed right now.
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