Google has dropped out of the running for the Pentagon’s $10B cloud-computing contract, echoing what its employees have been saying since the jump: that the project doesn’t jibe with its “corporate values.”
In a statement, Google said they “couldn’t be assured that [the deal] would align with [their] AI Principles.”
Ya think, Google?
Google’s announcement comes just months after the company decided not to re-up its contract with a Pentagon AI program, when protests broke out from employees who didn’t think Google should be in “the business of war.”
Now, for the cloud-computing project, Google says it believes that a “multi-cloud approach” is in the best interest of all government agencies because it “allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload.”
Only Google could turn down a $10B job
The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, (or JEDI), involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system.
The contract (which could last up to 10 years) gained widespread interest from tech giants consistently dwarfed by Amazon in the budding federal government market for cloud services back in May.