Within the next few week, we will find out
whether Amazon or Microsoft has one
of the most sensitive contracts the Pentagon has ever
handed out.
The US Department of Defense is about to give one of those two
companies $10bn over 10 years to build it a new cloud computing
network, which will handle some of its most secure data sets
and enable communication among its armed forces
around the world.
But there is a problem.
With just weeks to go until an announcement was planned,
President Trump intervened saying
that he had heard complaints about the tampering process
from some of America's great companies.
Some believe that the president is not
too happy about the prospect of the US government
handing a massive contract to Amazon whose founder, Jeff
Bezos, also owns "The Washington Post"
and has been a frequent target of the president's attacks.
Just a few days later, Mark Esper, the new Secretary of
announced he was going to conduct
another last-minute review into the process.
But it's not clear what the Secretary is actually
looking for.
Neither Amazon nor Microsoft has been contacted by the Defense
Department as part of that review, let alone
asked for any additional information.
So what is Mr Esper about up to?
The DoD says that he is undertaking
an educational exercise.
But others point out that he has been acting defense secretary
since June and is hardly likely to need
much more new information into the process.
Instead, many believe that what Mr Esper is doing
is trying to pave the way for a possible decision
to hand the contract to Amazon.
He's looking for political cover.
Whether he gets it or not is unclear,
but if that is the case I suspect
Amazon will take this as a good sign.