Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10B Cloud Competition

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/google-drops-out-of-pentagon-s-10-billion-cloud-competition

by logronoide • 8 years ago

249 98 8 years ago

Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again, after backing out of it, supposedly because of moral concerns.

A while back an article surfaced here [0] about how the JEDI competition is basically tailored to AWS, and how Amazon had lobbyists stipulate the exact conditions.

[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/has-bezos-become-mor...

illumin8• 8 years ago

Pretty telling how the money quote in the article is "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.”

In other words, they couldn't meet the requirements for the RFP, so they decided it was advantageous to score some morality points by dropping out...

ocdtrekkie• 8 years ago

Bear in mind, the "morality points" aren't on Google: They're on Google's employees. The commitment Google made for AI Principles only exists because their employees demanded it, and forced Google to end it's participation in the Pentagon's drone warfare project.

Google's management are more than happy to help the government engage in illegal assassination abroad via drone, but it's employees are not. For Google's executives, this is less to gain morality points with the public, but to retain employees who would leave otherwise.

Though another aspect is, they may have already gotten an indication from the DoD that dropping out of Maven would be held against them when evaluating the proposals. RFPs aren't just about the dollar value, and they'd certainly take into account the possibility of Googlers refusing to do the work needed to fulfill the contract.

cromwellian4• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure that for $10 billion, they could have gotten whatever certifications they needed by plowing resources into it. Elon Musk went through the same to get government contracts that certification requirements tailor made for Boeing/Lockheed.

Corporations are not people. Judge them by their actions, in the end, what matters is what happened, not intent. Almost every public institution's actions are always ascribed by some as driven by money or power, or others by high minded values.

The employees at a company can have high minded values. Even the company culture can have high minded values. But in the end, financial decisions made by companies are amoral, and what matters is, what the decisions actually were, not whether the executives were pressured into it, because ultimately, there is pressure on all sides from all stakeholders.

Giving up on $10 billion, no matter how you slice it, is a huge hit. They could have fought for it, but decided not to, based on whatever pressures they were reacting too. That's a win.

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Amazon has a big head start, so Google might be trying to save face by declaring themselves out of the contest.

azurezyq• 8 years ago

Let's talk about this item only.

I don't think that's all ethics related stuffs. The Pentagon's something different for me. I'm a Chinese and I definitely know that the Pentagon WILL use technology to fight against us. Should I write code for them? Or I should trust them not abusing?

If your country is on the other side of NATO, what do you think?

claydavisss• 8 years ago

If you've willingly chosen to reside in the US then your tax dollars are supporting this work regardless of who fulfills the contract.

p0rkbelly4• 8 years ago

The internet as we know it was invented due to a Department of Defense Initiative...

Besides that, if you complete work for the US government just assume the chinese government is going to have access to it eventually ;)

philwelch2• 8 years ago

Not buying their moral arguments at all, given that they are about to enter the Chinese market again

Their "moral" concerns are driven by the noisy section of their workforce that reflexively opposes the US military. These people aren't outspoken about the behavior of the Chinese government, in fact they probably don't think about it much.

mattnewton• 8 years ago

I should probably keep my mouth shut, but as a Google employee I can assure you I am concerned about both and I am not alone. My views are my own, etc

jpatokal• 8 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe...

PhasmaFelis• 8 years ago

That is completely untrue. Googlers seem to be just as upset over the China project as they were over the Pentagon thing.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe... * https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-employees-quit-over-cont...

I don't know who told you that, but you shouldn't trust them.

Latteland• 8 years ago

When I was at google people were against building a censored search engine for China, this caused a lot of arguing before they pulled out the first time.

dkhenry3• 8 years ago

I think its less of tailoring for AWS and more that AWS is worlds ahead of Google and Microsoft in their commercial offerings, and especially their government offerings. For instance Google Cloud does not have a High certification from FedRAMP which would rule it out being used for any workload that involved weapons systems which generally are FISMA High. I think what was dome was less writing it for AWS and more just writing it to have the requirements you would want out of any public cloud offering. The problem is most companies have been providing a "good enough for government work" solution and now they can't fulfill the RFP. ( Amazon is in this boat too, there are tons of services that haven't been cleared yet, and GovCloud is expensive and only exists in one region, in that respect Microsoft has been ahead, but they have their own problems)

Strongerpass3• 8 years ago

How is AWS worlds ahead Microsoft in their commercial cloud offerings? I work with both and to me they seem very similar.

eksemplar3• 8 years ago

Microsoft “won” the European market though, by being extremely quick to adopt European policies and offering really, really great support. I took AWS a while to get out of the legal grey area, and their support is still pretty mediocre because they rely too much on automation, which may be more efficient, but being able to call Seattle directly is a tremendous selling point for governments. Also having office365 helped Microsoft sell Azure quite a bit.

Google on the other hand are still in the legal grey area, and they’re even more automated than AWS.

I say “won”, because there isn’t a clear monopoly in Europe, and AWS allied themselves with a bunch of lobbying powerhouses like Deloitte and EY, but I’d say Azure is still far ahead.

p0rkbelly4• 8 years ago

Moral concerns can go both ways as well.

We don't know what the Pentagon will use the raw compute/storage resources for. I'm sure they are not telling MS/AWS/GOOG either.

I do know that the US Military invests heavily to make weapons better at killing, but also better at killing the right targets. Let's assume the due to US politics war is unavoidable. But, because of investments in technology (smarter drones, AI, guidance systems) in systems powered by the JEDI project we are now able to reduce civilian casualties by 90% in a military conflict. Hell even 10% is a huge win. Is this now a morally just cause?

BurningFrog• 8 years ago

When your assumption is also your conclusion, you have what's called a "circular argument".

It's obviously true, but says nothing about anything outside itself.

matt4077• 8 years ago

There might actually be a continuous spectrum of both morality and profitability of different actions...

Google doesn't care about any possible humility of not getting a DOJ contract. Because nobody would notice, and those who do are more likely to see it as a positive, considering the DOJ's reputation in procurement.

It also doesn't cost anything relevant to stay in. And even if the probability may be small small, the magnitude is enormous.

Leaving us with no clear motive BUT something that may have to do with morality. Of course this may be motivated by worries about their reputation among current and potential employees, but then we're getting into the whole "what's true altruism" debate which is rarely as productive as even fake altruism.

StreamBright• 8 years ago

I am not buying it either. Corporations do not have moral. The board might have some political considerations but we know that entering the Chinese market mean that Google had to accept things that are amoral.

tinkerteller2• 8 years ago

The problem with China is that government isn’t magically going to remove sensorship and Google had zero impact on their policy by staying out. It seems right move to me that Google will provide slightly more open search and other apps and may be able to instigate bit more openness. So going in seems like right strategy then staying out even if there was no money involved.

p0rkbelly4• 8 years ago

Let's be real. Google would not hesitate to sell G-suite/Google Docs to the Pentagon and any US military ally in the world.

How many orders or strategy doctrines are delivered via e-mail/spreadsheets?

village-idiot2• 8 years ago

From what I hear from the soldiers I know: far too many.

adtac• 8 years ago

But hey, at least enemies of the state can deliver targetted ads to the the Secretary of Defence, right in their email!

carlsborg• 8 years ago

Probably the most secure channel, if you trust it.

ryanlol• 8 years ago

I own a few domains that happen to be common typos of domains used by various militaries.

At least once every couple of months someone emails me something pretty sensitive looking, but so far nothing super exciting.

More boring stuff, such as travel itineraries and boarding passes for a defense minister show up almost weekly.

mc32• 8 years ago

Right, if they are willing to pursue project dragonfly, despite its issues, then it’s also likely they would proceed with the DoD contract, if they could.

notyourwork• 8 years ago

This makes me suspect Amazon's HQ2 is almost certainly going to be Washington D.C. Furthermore, gives me impression the reason it took so long to commit to a date to announce HQ2 is because they were waiting on whether or not this type of contact might be elicited. Having a massive government contract is a prime reason for having a large physical presence near by.

dogma1138• 8 years ago

Wouldn’t Virginia be a better location for an HQ in that case?

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

Yes. It will probably be in the DC area, not literally in DC.

Deimorz• 8 years ago

Scott Galloway also believes it will be in Washington, and was always intended to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HyiY_m_YxI&t=542

I recommend watching the actual talk, but there are a few sections of it summarized (including a bit about Amazon HQ2) in this article: https://www.recode.net/2018/9/19/17878766/scott-galloway-pre...

Tepix2• 8 years ago

The first good thing I've read about Google in a while. A change in direction, perhaps?

cronz2• 8 years ago

Why is this good? (I'm not American)

remify• 8 years ago

Because data mining and AI shouldn't be use for unethical purposes (Spying on it's citizen ...).

Tepix2• 8 years ago

Because they are taking ethics into account (or claim to be).

manigandham3• 8 years ago

It isn't. The military should be equipped with the best talent and tech we have to offer, for the best defense of the nation. We don't live in a vacuum and there are now lifetime dictators like Putin and Jinping with major military power and constant cold-war and cyberware tactics being deployed.

It's easy to throw around ethics but many people don't think that far ahead and saying "we shouldn't make weapons" is naive and dangerous when the rest of the world already has them pointed at us.

thisismyaccoun7• 8 years ago

The article says it was for two reasons, values and inability to meet certain requirements. If it had really been values that caused them to back out, they wouldn't have mentioned the second point. They only mentioned values to try to get something out of their loss.

golemiprague• 8 years ago

I don't understand what is so moral about not selling stuff to the army, as if google are not enjoying the protection this army provides them. I would say it is even less moral, you let other people do the dirty work for you. They should give a discount to the army as a thank you for the sacrifice the people in the army are sacrificing for a fraction of the salary someone in google is earning. I mean, I know googlers still have PTSD from the Damore thingy and that they are still recovering from the trauma in a safe space designed for that, but still, fighting in a remote country for half an year is at least as hard?

ElBarto• 8 years ago

The article strongly suggests that everyone is far behind AWS and that they therefore think that any such large contract is unwinnable.

Tough.

trhway• 8 years ago

not only technically-wise. From what i see and hear Google has significant impedance mismatch between internal "googliness" and the "enterprise" style required to do business in the enterprise/gov/mil space. Just imagine a Google's $1M+/year AI PhD doing a support call with a bodyshop consultant maintaining a laundry services accounts payable application for some small Army base.

tanilama• 8 years ago

TBH, I don't think Google stand a solid chance winning it either. Their offering is not the best, and there isn't good wills from the current administration either.

Even though issues regarding big techs nowadays are all high politicized, but Google stands in the centre of the current political radicalization in US. Their means are extremely restricted.

ardy42• 8 years ago

TBH, I don't think Google stand a solid chance winning it either. Their offering is not the best, and there isn't good wills from the current administration either.

IIRC, the current administration has less goodwill towards Amazon because its CEO owns the Washington Post. I don't think that was a factor.

marpstar• 8 years ago

It's both Amazon (because Bezos owns the Post) and Google (because of Eric Schmidt's close ties with the DNC).

merpnderp• 8 years ago

These things are ruled by likely 10,000 laws passed by Congress to minimize corruption by allowing the executive branch to hand out favors. The people with actual power to corrupt are Senators and Reps who can add pork to spending bills.

iofiiiiiiiii• 8 years ago

"Oops, we forgot to get certified for this moneymaker contract. What do we do, Harry?"

"Why, Sally, you know what to do - claim this is a decision entirely based on ethics!"

amelius• 8 years ago

"We messed up security in Google+ and it's all over the news. Now we'll never get that Pentagon contract. It will make us look even worse."

"Hey, we'll just back out ourselves and claim it's because of ethics"

snarfy• 8 years ago

I'm going to laugh, then sigh, when Oracle wins it.

webninja4• 8 years ago

Or IBM :(

tinkerteller2• 8 years ago

What was wrong with evil ‘ol Plantir? Thiel had been waiting for his reward since he wagged his tail for Trump.

writepub• 8 years ago

What's wall street doing about Google's hostage situation - held hostage by their own outraged employees.

Two publicly documented big opportunities missed so far - the Pentagon missile deal and to an extent this. Maybe the China search engine opportunity is also at risk. Time for Wall Street to sell Google, and let their opinion be known!

webninja4• 8 years ago

I own many voting shares in Google and I support them whenever they decide to choose whichever side they think benefits humanity more. They have good heads on their shoulders and I trust their decision making. Google oftentimes is just trying to make the world a better place and fill missing needs. Say what negativity you want but the world would sorely miss them if they weren’t around.

If you want a stock that soaks up DOD contracts, pick up Raytheon. I have a friend that works there and he can’t tell anyone what he does there.

Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10B Cloud Competition

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