The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon, officials close to the decision-making process said.
The 11th-hour Oval Office intervention comes just weeks before the winning bid was expected to be announced and has now left a major military priority up in the air, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door process freely. As recently as Sunday, the Defense Department defended its plans to move ahead with a single company for what is known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, a $10 billion contract that would be one of the government’s most expensive information technology procurements ever.
No decision has yet been made, the officials said. But some officials said the move to award the contract to more than one company is a possibility.