Pentagon on military data-nomming JEDI cloud mind trick: There can be only one (vendor) The Pentagon has doubled down on its plan to hand a megabucks cloud contract to a single vendor in the face of opposition from corners of the tech industry and military experts. In a letter released just as the Department of Defense was due to issue the final call for proposals for the lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense …
"...cleared for access to secret and top secret Defense Department data, including <nuclear weapon design information> (PDF)."
One assumes that the helpfully highlighted link text isn't actually an open link to the top secret "nuclear weapon design information" PDF as it infers but to the JEDI contract perhaps?
Though it could explain where the Norks got their plans ...
He'll scuttle the deal and probably award to Leisure Suit Larry (Ellis / Oracle).
Of course there are some probably preferred vendors that Fux and Friends could recommend. In fact, I hear one capable vendor has headquarters in the Kremlin!
"will require the vendor to be cleared for access to secret and top secret Defense Department data, including nuclear weapon design information"
Who will be cleared? Will they require full security clearance for every single employee that has or might have access to the system? That's going to be fun to implement, and even more fun to audit.
How many disks will the information be spread over? Cloud companies move data around all the time transparently. Can they confirm secure destruction of all those disks at end of life? (Milspec secure not commercial secure).
And what happened to Need to Know? Just how many cloud company techies will have possible access to this data although they have no legitimate need for it?
Hve they planned for what to do when (not if) someone finds an exploitable flaw and posts 'Building your own nuke for Dummies' to the web?
The sage continues.
AWS is the only bidder with the required capability.
Every major legacy government contractor has called in every political favor, and done everything imaginable to kill the contract.
Failing that, they want a second vendor. It doesn't matter that no other vendor has a functional cloud offering. In fact that's a feature. They want to trip up deployment of cloud applications by requiring any approved application to run on both clouds... when that second implementation is ready in 'soonish' e.g. 2029.
Go ahead award it to one top level cloud vendor, just be sure that the vendor distributes the downstream hardware and software across at least 3 different top tier vendors(and not token deployments of said vendors):
- Data centers: Equinix, Switch, QTS ?
- Hypervisors: VMware, Citrix, (pick some KVM/Openstack supplier perhaps Red hat?)
- Servers: HP, Dell, Cisco ?
- Storage: HP, Dell, Hitchai or IBM ?
- Networking: Cisco, Juniper HP or Extreme/Brocade ?
That cloud can then put their API stuff on top of that stack and go from there.
Not so easy I am sure(I have been working in IT/Operations for 24 years), but at the same time would simultaneously address the outsider's want for more competition and the Pentagon wanting a single vendor. Also is good for the industry in obviously diversifying where the money goes for such a big contract. We are talking about long term stuff here after all.
Unless offerings 'become... seamlessly integrated'
Is that the same as self-actuating autonomous? In Paralleling Programs with Prime Private and Premium Pirate Protection Streams for Assets Streaming Paralleling Programs?
One imagines then the Goal and Destination of Arrival is Engagement and Space Utilisation/Universal Presentation of Live Operational Virtual Environments.
And now y'all know where all of that is available from. For who and/or for what is always yet to be provided, and maybe never needed to be made known ..... for quite obvious reason of Identity Security/Core Privacy.
And a great fit, here proposed, with any lucrative JEDI Contractor with Portals into Future Needs and Seeds and Feeds..
Things have moved on quite considerably since Search for Leads led to Following Almighty Tales Presenting Fabulous Trails.
Where be you on that HyperSonic Flight ..... and have you Commands to Control and Controls to Command?
:-) Has anybody posting here ever had a dander around the Pentagon whilst visiting the Fortress?
And can you imagine the likes of the states and levels of Greater IntelAIgent Games Play in the Exotic and Erotic Eastern Fields ..... Sino-Soviet Satellite Systems. ..... and do you think Live Operational Virtual Environment Supply and Maintenance would be of Interest to Star Stage Players there?
cc Holywood Palace Barracks ftao Andrew Parker re Live Treats/LOVE Threats to National Security.
And please, no ..... "Nurse, those meds aren't working or nurse, those meds are brilliant" quips. It is what it is, with or without medical/pharmaceutical intervention and participation.:-)
Despite my instinctive aversion to conspiracy theories, I'm beginning to believe that Putin *was* behind Trump's election win. He appears to be the main beneficiary from just about every decision made since.
This particular brain death is clearly going to result in vendor lock-in and the Pentagon's encouraging words about convergence actually point to the reason why: the successful vendor can exclude everyone else from the running next time around by being as bloody awkward and secretive as possible about interop standard. This secrecy, of course, would be "in the national interest".
The lack of awareness of how businesses operate would be understandable amongst politicians steeped in Marxist theology and weaned on central planning. Coming from what claims to be the world's greatest free-market economy, it is ... jaw-dropping.
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...Or was it simply a Not-Clinton request to Universe, aired some 4 or 5 years before the latest elections, Ken Hagan? Trump is just a capitalised five-letter word, with Putin counting the same another number of letters...
One can humbly suppose that the electricity still running through its wired ways and some other things unarguably comforting us and them still keep you and me and everyone out of cave - home. It is good.
You don't really need to believe or take into account some anonymous megalomaniac bullshit, do you? (-;
Ah. Noone cares about Tiny Drivers by Team Surreal. Good it is.
Some megalomusical musing follows - https://youtu.be/z2ttkI5lEYM , Depeche Mode RMX for Peace HQ . Next in the tracklist comes Angel of Love. This sequence/combination, of course, is purely coincidental.
Why the hell are they not using in house IT and FFS I hate using the term their own 'cloud' / secure network ? The amount of marketing speak used makes it seem like the sales people have already won.
Is it because they do not have the knowledge or correct people to advise them or because the string pullers want spend in the right places ?
Because the real reason the US has such a huge military budget is because it is the trough at which a greater and greater percentage of pigs in Washington feed. It is a perfect place for pork because it is politically difficult to cut, and as politicians see it anything done in-house is merely a wasted opportunity for people to be wined, dined and bribed and later accept cushy consulting arrangements from both the contract winners, and the losers who will want to be considered the next time a big slab of bacon comes up for RFP.
You don't think the US really spends eleventy drizzillion dollars on defense, do you? The main expense that's in-house in the DoD budget will soon be health care - larger than salary. Which is why republicans have started talking about the need to privatize the VA, and I'm sure Tricare would be next on their hit list after that. They don't care that the free market has already proven it is worse at providing health care, they think about the never-ending stream of "lobbying" money from the winners and losers-who-wanna-be-winners-in-the-future and can already taste the five star meals and feel the breeze from junkets to Hawaii to check out their VA hospitals.
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I think Gibbon wrote about Rome's plan to build a JUPITER single-vendor papyrus barn just before the whole house of cards collapsed, the money printing showed real consequences, immigrants invaded, juntas decided to take matters in their own hands, Neo-Judeans and Roman News Network hosts got crucified naked along the Via Appia and half of the empire decided to fuck off to the East.
Meanwhile, Hyperreal Amounts of "Money": Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us? (That's ten times the annual GDP of the UK, how is that even possible?)
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