Amazon’s Cloud Division Hires Lobbyists on Pentagon, Intel

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud division hired lobbyists to work on Defense Department and intelligence community cloud computing matters as the company fights the loss of a $10 billion Pentagon cloud-services contract over alleged political interference by President Donald Trump.

Amazon Web Services hired Washington-based American Defense International in January, according to a lobbying disclosure filed this week.

AWS hired Josh Martin, who recently served as chief of staff to Representative Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, according to the disclosure. Longtime defense lobbyist Michael Herson, who is president and chief executive officer of American Defense International, will also be working for the cloud-services giant, the filing showed.

Representatives for AWS and the lobbying firm didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Amazon is challenging the Pentagon’s award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract to Microsoft Corp. in federal court over claims that the department failed to fairly judge its bid because Trump views Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos as his “political enemy.”

The JEDI cloud project is intended to modernize the Defense Department’s technology systems and speed up real-time sharing of information across the military. The contract is worth as much as $10 billion over ten years and could offer the winner a bigger foothold in the burgeoning federal cloud market.

Amazon scored a win last month when the U.S. Court of Federal Claims temporarily blocked Microsoft from working on the project while the lawsuit was ongoing.

The Central Intelligence Agency is planning to hire multiple cloud-computing providers for a new program to serve the intelligence community. AWS won a landmark $600 million deal in 2013 to provide cloud-computing services to the CIA.

The agency’s new Commercial Cloud Enterprise initiative gives rivals like Microsoft, International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. a chance to make inroads in federal contracting of cloud services.

--With assistance from Naomi Nix.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at btenerellabr@bloomberg.net;Matt Day in Seattle at mday63@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Robin Ajello

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