Up front: Project JEDI is a big deal. The US military needs a reliable cloud-service platform from which to operate its massive AI infrastructure. Unfortunately the project was mishandled from the very beginning. Now, two years later, the Pentagon’s calling for a reboot: Evolving requirements? Acting DOD chief information officer John Sherman is quoted in the press release as saying the Pentagon’s scrapping the project because “evolution of the cloud ecosystem within DoD, and changes in user requirements to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute mission” have necessitated an overhaul. But the Pentagon was clearly aware of the problem with a single-provider cloud solution from the onset of the contract. IBM and Oracle both gave official statements citing the folly of the single-cloud provider. Oracle went on to sue the government and IBM protested JEDI at inception, giving the following statement on its own blog: Notably, Oracle’s lawsuit was dismissed after a government watchdog organization said the Pentagon’s single-provider solution had been thoroughly looked into and met all the nation’s requirements. Per the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in November of 2018: And that makes it particularly silly for the Pentagon’s acting IT boss to go on the record now claiming the US has only recently come to understand that a multi-provider cloud solution is necessary for Project JEDI. Bottom line: The Pentagon’s covering its own ass. Donald Trump’s conflicts of interests, in this particular case, have set the nation’s defensive capabilities and AI programs back by years. Whether we like it or not, we’re in a global AI arms race. And the US is doing a great job of shooting itself in the foot so China can catch up. There’s no telling how many millions of dollars the US has spent in court defending its ill-advised and completely inexplicable decision to restrict a $10B cloud-service project to a single-provider. We do know that phase one of Project JEDI was schedule to be completed in April – a deadline that’s long passed. Now, after all the delays, the Pentagon (sans Donald Trump’s interference) will finally move forward with Project JEDI as a multi-provider cloud solution, apparently starting the bidding process all over. And there’s only one rational explanation for all of it: Trump’s soft-shelled, crybaby egotism. While many experts are concerned over the Pentagon’s pivot to an AI-powered military, Project JEDI is more than just a weapons platform. The development of cloud-based AI platforms is crucial to the nation’s defense whether the newspapers are being nice to the sitting president or not.
