Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Defends Bid for $10B Pentagon Cloud Contract Amid Criticism Over Government Use of Technology (geekwire.com)
Microsoft said Friday it will not pull out of the competition for a $10 billion cloud contract for the Department of Defense, despite growing concerns about private companies selling new technologies to the federal government. From a report: The Redmond, Wash., company defended its position in a blog post Friday, claiming that technologists should be involved in government adoption of new innovations to ensure they are not misused. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in the post that "to withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way." He decided to share publicly sentiments that he and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed at a monthly Q&A with employees Thursday. "We want the people of this country and especially the people who serve this country to know that we at Microsoft have their back," Smith wrote. "They will have access to the best technology that we create." Smith's defense comes days after an unspecified number of Microsoft employees urged the company to not bid on the Project JEDI.
Further reading: Oracle Trying Hard To Make Sure Pentagon Knows Amazon Isn't the Only Cloud Around; Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition; Jeff Bezos Defends Big Tech Working with Department of Defense.
Further reading: Oracle Trying Hard To Make Sure Pentagon Knows Amazon Isn't the Only Cloud Around; Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition; Jeff Bezos Defends Big Tech Working with Department of Defense.
The Redmond, Wash., company defended its position in a blog post Friday, claiming that technologists should be involved in government adoption of new innovations to ensure they are not misused. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in the post that "to withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way."
Hmmm...the same logic Google used to defend jumping into bed with the Chinese government. Sort of hard to argue with that.
If you want to see the DoD's shady plans get frustrated, inflicting Microsoft on them is better than anything else you could ask for.
Or rather, the fact that "government use of technology" is suddenly an issue means the issue isn't the tech, it's what we do with it. The curious thing is that it focuses on government when it should encompass all such use by everyone, from local charity, big corporate overlords, but including local and federal government too. But of course, that both is way too big for most people, and doesn't push enough "government bad, capitalist companies good" buttons.
Anyhow, I don't really care what their excuse ("defense") is, but there certainly is a deeper question to be answered. What do we want anyone to be doing with all that tech? I for one like some privacy for myself and transparency and accountability on the part of those who have power over me, not the other way around.
"We don't want the government to give all $10 billion to Amazon"
For helping to defend this great country. Bravo.
Ya, MS has heard of it and wants no part of that mystical religion. The Pentagon can kiss their info goodbye if MS is involved.
"We have been using your software to support the war fighter, I'm thankful to you for your help in enabling us to deliver supplies, defend our troupes and kill the bad guys. I'm sorry if that makes some of you uncomfortable, that that is what the military does, it is our job and we do it as a service to freedom of the nation" -- a actual quote I once heard at a meeting of Mission Planning Software developers.
So, let me ask all you squeamish children of hippies out there a simple question.
Would you rather the U.S. military have the technology or the Chinese?
Someone is going to build it, if anyone every invents it. As a matter of fact the military research arm generally considers itself to be 10 years ahead of the private sector. Remember they have rights to manufacture and use anything that is recorded in patent law, it is just cheaper for them to buy it off the self.
So, exactly what are people protesting? Software companies building software for profit? Technology being used in wars? because, that ship already sailed about 1947.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
But the government is a bridge too far? Pull the other one.
While I applaud Microsoft for giving the big old middle finger to their whiny, pussy, millennial employees who don't want to work on military contracts, I still hope Uncle Sam gets a money back guarantee for everything. I'm not confident that Microsoft employees could wipe their ass with both hands given the Windows 10 quality I see these days.
Interesting how the anit-government and anit-US element love to live in the US but do all they can to undermine the country all the while trying to help the Chinese who are aside from putting millions in concentration camps execute dissents.
Please move to China and try protesting there.
[Homer is heading out to participate in Whacking Day]
Lisa: Dad, for the last time, please don't lower yourself to the level of the mob.
Homer: Lisa, maybe if I'm part of that mob, I can help steer it in wise directions. Now where's my giant foam cowboy hat and airhorn?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701292/quotes
... is that with that much money on the table, MS will give everything in data and access to its other customers (i.e. basically everybody) to the NSA when they even only hint. Remember that the NSA is military intelligence and belongs to the Pentagon. That is the real problem I see here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. Morals, the future of the race, etc. all irrelevant. Of course, not all Americans are like that, but most of those with money and power are. Even some of those with a lot of money (e.g. Buffet, Soros, Cook) seem to be uncomfortable with this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...people do understand that a military IS a necessary thing for a country to have, right?
And that an unprepared, technologically outclassed military invites trouble?
I understand better than most how ridiculous our military-industrial complex is, chasing multi-bajillion dollar white elephants and $1200 coffee cups. But this (nor most of the righteous "how DARE they work for the military!?!?" indignance) doesn't seem to be a protest against wasteful or pork-barrel defense spending, it seems to be directed against ANY defense spending. ...making it particularly ironic when a bunch of zealots at Google threaten to quit over Google working for the Defense Dept of the US, yet seemingly soldier-on building China-compliant reporting, tracking, and filtering engines.
-Styopa
I.T. is already the future line of defence for countries. The cost/benefit ratio is insane. An American F35 looks to be costing $100 million per plane. PER PLANE! That is a lot of very smart $100K per year hackers. An office block of this folk looks to be a way better investment than something that can be shot down in one evening. And, to talk about the article, it is completely natural that Microsoft and the US government will become more embedded (if not already, but secretly). It is a huge advantage, like the US control of DNS. Not to say the US wants to leverage that position, but it it really is something which warrants more dialog. Overall, China/Russia will not accept Windows as a national OS. Forked linux variants will take over. I don't want to be doom and gloom, but there is no way that China/Russia will accept that they will run their infrastructure on an unknown codebase. This decade will be know as the decade where countries realise how much 'everything' relies on computer systems. Trump has highlighted how fickle things can be. China already have their own Linux variants but in effect, they have to keep going on their own path for very acceptable reasons. And, never mind they are stealing this, GPL3 be damned, they will never agree to anything like that.
Government contracts are big business, and the US government spends billions annually on IT hardware, software, and services.
Management has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They would need a damn good reason to justify walking away from a $10B DoD contract for cloud services. Some politically correct bullshit rationale isn't going to cut it.
I used to be a staunch defender of Microsoft, but since Windows 7 and Office 2007 I can't recommend them anymore. Those were the beginning of their quality assurance spiraling out of control, as well as their design goals diverging from common sense and user needs. The current form of the company needs to go away.
Heard from the irrelevant NPC already I see.
Is how many of those objecting are foreigners or immigrants who obtained citizenship. Why does that matter? Two reasons:
1. People on H1B can, as the SJWs like to say, "fuck right off" about their involvement with our military. They are guests in our country and their distaste for supporting our military isn't worth the electricity to write and post or the bandwidth to transmit.
2. If they are foreign-born and became citizens, that is a legitimate consideration going forward in the general political conflict over immigration.
No matter how much SJWs want to argue otherwise, there is a natural distinction between supporting our military and supporting how it's used. Claiming otherwise is as idiotic as saying that by supporting law enforcement you must necessarily support police brutality. Such idiots and assholes are effectively doing nothing more than drowning out every voice that wants rational reform.
Who said we are Jedi?
Microsoft has never been in any way constrained by ethical behavior. Why would this be any different?
"the bad guys" ... who gets to define who's the bad guys? To most of the world, the USA are the biggest of the bad guys. .... or Chinese?” ... Typical deliberate and systematic one-dimensional false dichotomy of extremes. My reply: What's the difference? Mass-murderers are mass-murderers are mass-murderers. The "cause" is irrelevant. PROTIP: EVERYONE got a convenient excuse. Like “but they are the bad guys!", "They started it!" or "It’s only vile childish revenge!! ... err, I mean justice!". For every crime you can list that your enemy did, they can list one that you did. It's only each one's personal propaganda reality distortion, that makes it look like they themselves did less and the other did more. But the mere fact that you both want to "punish" every single crime, to "balance" the universe or whatever, by definition means that even if one did less crimes, he still plans to correct that backlog.
"US
Fuck off, you're just like Göring.
> If you supply tech that makes it easier to got to war, you become complicit.
You're about three million years too late if you're trying to prevent people from starting wars because they don't have the tech.
The tech can help decide a) who wins the war and b) how many causalities there are.
Have you ever studied World War II at all? You've heard of WWII, right? World War 2 was a turning point, because up until then the basic approach to warfare was you'd kill all the guys in the other country. There was a significant amount of that still in World War II, but a new idea was also introduced - using technology to win a war without killing everyone in the opposing country.
Nowadays, we have things like the Gulf War, which was one without killing more than 0.01% of the losing country - by using technology to remove their ability to fight, without killing them.
There has more or less always been a war going on as long as there have been humans. Have you taken World History? Did you notice the history of the world needsis basically a series of wars - 99% of those without Microsoft?
Youn have carpet bombing war, precision warfare, cyberwar - we technologists can perhaps influence that a bit, but there was war long before there computers and they'll be war long after computers are gone.
"They're in it for the money. Nothing else matters."
Killing people and destroying their property is the Pentagon's business, which is mostly hidden from citizens. Citizens pay, but don't get to know where there money went.
The Microsoft bid for running the cloud for the Pentagon smells like rotten fish. How could the Pentagon be so careless as to trust a company run by foreign nationals?
> If you supply tech that makes it easier to got to war, you become complicit.
You're about three million years too late if you're trying to prevent people from starting wars because they don't have the tech.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? Here is a hint "make it easier" is something pretty different from "make it possible". I stopped reading there as you clearly have nothing worthwhile to say.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not to be a zealot, more for the sake of common-sense national security. The more governments rely on proprietary software and services, as well as the more entrenched proprietary code becomes in our society, our vehicles and even in our bodies, the easier it will be for a single corporation to stage a coup against multiple governments. I'm not saying governments shouldn't trust corporations at all, just that they need to draw the line on what is and isn't acceptable to purchase from the private sector, and to think deeper about the potential consequences of their actions.
Can't the Pentagon get some Unix sysadmins from the Navy to help them set up an OwnCloud? Or have they all washed out and been replaced with Windows power users by this point? I would think the Pentagon would want to know their own people could respond to any downtime problems at the speed of the Armed Forces rather than have to rely on Microsoft tech support any time something goes wrong.
Why doesn't the DoD, or even the larger US government just start their own cloud service, and make it available/sell it to various departments of federal, state and local governments, and totally shake taxpayers free of politically biased companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, et al? It could even be a net income source for the government! Hire a few Unix/Linux veterans, and they'd be off to the races