During the Cold War, American intelligence efforts were divided. The NSA, FBI, CIA, and other groups functioned in an atmosphere of both cooperation and competition—“coop-tition”—to keep an eye not just on the Soviets but on each other. We didn’t put our eggs in one basket, to borrow a phrase.
This wasn’t particularly efficient, but it was probably relatively effective. Having a variety of organizations with different viewpoints, cultures, and capabilities meant the U.S. could cast a wider intelligence net. Moreover, while there were threats abroad, there were also potential risks at home, like Alger Hiss: a Soviet double-agent in our government, caught thanks to diversified intelligence efforts (and Richard Nixon).
But despite the importance of coop-tition, Obama-era appointees, still lurking in the DOD, have decided that political kick-backs are more important than national security.
Last week, the Pentagon opened a request for a single-source contract for cloud computing services. Despite the fact that the field of potential service providers is deep—IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google—the DOD has already picked a winner: Amazon. The contract has a base two years, with options for eight more, covering 4 million devices and an estimated value of $10 billion. As reported last week by Nextgov, the U.S. Transportation command has already started migrating classified data to Amazon Web Service’s cloud.
Amazon has proven itself an amazing retail-service provider. Jeff Bezos started it just selling books, but it’s survived and dominated a constantly changing Internet landscape.
But this latest part of Amazon’s story has three huge problems: It’s bad for national security, it creates a monopoly, and it’s betrays revolting political abuse.
Diversified intelligence assets proved critical during the Cold War and are probably more important now. While disconnected security technologies can limit an intelligence agent’s individual access, that disconnection also limits a saboteur’s access. As 143 million Americans experienced last year with the Equifax breach, consolidated data is are vulnerable data.
Just to protect my own personal security as much as possible, I use three browsers, a VPN, and different search engines. If that base-level of security is important to me, shouldn’t it be important for all of America?
Giving everything to Amazon contradicts long-standing intelligence policy. As Open Markets Institute economist Matt Stoller told The Hill, “A single-source provider for Pentagon cloud services is obviously reckless. The Pentagon should clearly have multiple cloud providers so that if something happens to one of them there is resiliency and redundancy.”
National security fears notwithstanding, sole-sourcing a project of this size is horrible for the taxpayer. The procurement process in the current contracting world is laborious, arcane, and massively time consuming, but it exists for a reason: It creates a competitive environment that keeps costs from getting completely out of control. Taking competition out of the equation opens the door to graft and inflated prices.
If a general’s brother-in-law gets a no-bid contract to install cubicles somewhere in suburban Maryland, it’s not a threat to democracy. But giving a cyber-security monopoly to the richest man in the world is.
So if this is bad for both our common defense and the general welfare, why are we doing this? In February it was revealed that the Pentagon had already given a $950 million contract to Amazon-partner REAN Cloud, and this latest move just cements the risk of creating an Amazon monopoly. As this “accelerated” and “opaque” effort to give Amazon even more money has raised anti-trust fears by many experts, we have to ask who’s driving this?
The answer is Obama-era cronies, paying back political favors.
To reward tech companies that supported his campaign, Obama populated the government’s digital services with their flunkies: the GSA’s software corporation 18f, the United States Digital Service, and others. Even today, Defense Innovation Board is chaired by Bezos’s partner and fellow Clinton supporter Eric Schmidt.
This has created an environment where political enemies of President Trump can continue to give kickbacks to the groups and individuals who opposed him, undermining his ability to lead our national security efforts. This revolting phenomenon has been reported by Breitbart and also The Atlantic, two very different sources.
In fairness, this kind of patronage is not unusual. A leader must ensure that he has loyal staff. (The term for that is the “spoils system.”) What is unusual is for appointees to lurk around after that leader is gone so they can actively undermine his replacement.
I can’t open my web browser without hearing about how important diversity is, yet left-wing cronies have decided diversity isn’t important when it comes to protecting our country. They want to put all our eggs in Amazon’s basket, and we’re not going to like how the omelet tastes when those eggs break.
Jared Whitley worked in the defense industry for five years. He has also worked in the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Bush White House.
