Esper’s Foot-Dragging on Mega-Cloud Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

Lawrence J. Korb argues that U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper must stand up to President Donald Trump and move forward with the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure megacloud-computing contract.

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Newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper claims that the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure mega-cloud-computing contract, once scheduled to be awarded to Amazon or Microsoft by month’s end, must be placed on hold until he can review it. Why?

Pentagon chief information officer Dana Deasy backs him up, claiming that JEDI is such a large acquisition program that any newly appointed secretary would do the same. But this reasoning does not pass the smell test, and actually contradicts Deasy’s previous statements. Esper is not coming to this cold. For the past two years, he has been Secretary of the Army, and then acting Secretary of Defense, and therefore should be familiar with how the high-profile, groundbreaking JEDI program has moved along. There is no doubt that he has placed the contract on hold to appease President Trump.

The above excerpt was originally published in Defense One. Click here to view the full article.

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