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A comment on Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microsoft were fighting over. Parent comment

Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by tablespoon on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:15PM (#27753044)
> The state should procure an entirely open source / public domain cloud stack that would commeditize the "cloud" space allowing any org to run data centers with a standardized interface. The state should then run their own data centers in-house with the stock design rather than outsourcing those operational costs

> This would be far better for society. Compute-for-all.

Yeah, but that could also be the perfect being the enemy of the good. IIRC, there have been many, many massive failed military IT projects (e.g. they've spent decades trying and failing to replace legacy accounting systems). If they tried to build their own cloud, a very real possibility is that billions of dollars are spent creating an open source cloud platform that literally no one wants to use.

Also, my employer actually did implement their own private cloud using open source in our own datacenters, but that's been abandoned in favor of AWS and Azure. If the military builds it, it doesn't mean anyone else will come.

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Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by Ericson2314 on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:18PM (#27753081)
I wouldn't call more another massive privatized infrastructure "good" even if it does its job in the the short term. I would rather the government gain autonomy even if it means temporary adjustment pain.
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Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by tablespoon on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:21PM (#27753104)
> I wouldn't call more another massive privatized infrastructure "good" even if it does its job in the the short term.

Good in this case means meeting most or all of the project objectives. If they pursue a "perfect" solution, they may not do even that, let alone realize the other social goods you're hoping for.

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Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by Ericson2314 on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:28PM (#27753179)
I acknowledge your goalposts. I personally value my social good goalposts more important than the project objectives, and JEDI as originally envisioned is negative with respective to my goalposts. It is thus net negative to me.

Pithily paraphrased, "Those who would give up essential [self-sufficiency], to purchase a little temporary [efficiency], deserve neither".

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Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by tablespoon on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:49PM (#27753384)
> Pithily paraphrased, "Those who would give up essential [self-sufficiency], to purchase a little temporary [efficiency], deserve neither".

From the Pentagon's perspective, they're probably meeting that with either AWS or Azure. They probably look at self-sufficiency as a national, not organizational thing. So long as the thing is built and located in the US and owned and operated by Americans, it means they're not giving up any self-sufficiency.

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Re:Pentagon cancels $10B cloud contract that Amazon, Microso... by Ericson2314 on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @09:30PM (#27756383)
Certainly. But until we reign in the military as a portion of government spending, big military investments should have direct civilian benefits not civilian costs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Keynesianism (note the "Keynesianism" is somewhat tongue-in-cheek) does not cut it for the latter.
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