The giant Google is looking for a new cloud computing contract with the US Department of Defense (DoD).
And this, even despite negative reactions from its employees to its plans at the Pentagon in the past.
According to reports, the contract could run into the billions of dollars.
The company hopes to compete for the new version of the JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract canceled this summer.
Valued at $ 10 billion, this contract aims to provide almost all of the cloud computing needs of the Department of Defense (DoD).
A state affair
Already in 2018, the DoD launched a call for tenders for a single-award cloud contract.
Eventually, after numerous delays, criticisms and legal challenges, Microsoft was awarded the contract in 2019. But following this award, Amazon Web Services launched a broad legal and public fight, claiming that President Donald Trump had prevented it from doing so. to win the contract.
A contract that could have reached ten billion dollars over ten years.
After three years, last July, the DoD decided to abandon JEDI.
According to the ministry, the legal delays posed a threat to national security.
The cloud computing contract was therefore relaunched under the name JWCC for Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability.
A Google military cloud
Google had not been able to compete for the previous single-price JEDI contract.
The company did not have the necessary certifications, but it now considers that it is able to take on at least part of the new contract.
The part in question is the JWCC, a multi-cloud, multi-vendor program.
Already in September, Google's cloud unit declared an urgent “Code yellow” project internally.
An alert that allowed the company to withdraw its engineers from other missions to focus on the military project.
On the one hand, the JWCC would allow Google to have more control over its subcontracts.
On the other hand, DoD's rules on sensitive data mean that the cloud provider won't necessarily know what data it will store or what workloads it will process.
If it wins this contract, the giant Google will therefore have no control over the military cloud data made available to the DoD.
An ethical issue
In short, Google has yet to release its DoD proposal to the public.
But if one thing is certain, it is that it will elicit negative reactions from employees and challenge the group's principles regarding the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
We still don't know if the terms of the contract would force Google to violate its list of ethical AI principles.
This list indicates that the company will not design or deploy any artificial intelligence intended for the manufacture of weapons or technologies whose main purpose is to harm people.
For its part, the Defense Ministry said the project would support the military in combat.
For privacy reasons, no further details are available on the exact application.
Beyond AI, the US military has expressed in the past that it is not opposed to cybernetic enhancements for soldiers.
A multi-party contract
The contract studied by Google is open to various companies.
But the DoD is clear, "any supplier wishing to win a contract will have to allow access to critical war data."
All with a variety of classification levels, including “top secret and top secret” information.
“The program requires the provision of advanced data analysis services that securely enable timely and data-driven decisions to be made at the tactical level,” the Ministry of Defense also said.
In July, the ministry said it would seek proposals from Microsoft and AWS, which it considers the only two hyperscalers capable of meeting its demands….
While saying they are ready to reach out to Google, Oracle and IBM.
The decision on which companies will take part in the JWCC program is expected to be made by April 2022.
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