Microsoft Employees Beg Company Not to Bid on US Military's Project JEDI

Megalith said:
Many Microsoft employees don’t believe that what we build should be used for waging war. When we decided to work at Microsoft, we were doing so in the hopes of “empowering every person on the planet to achieve more,”
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Windows 10 forced updates, bugs, bad UI design, and illegal data-harvesting all see to it that that goal isn't accomplished.
 
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The last article like this that was linked was the petition against MS providing cloud services for the boarder patrol.

There are 130,000 FTE employees. That petition had 300 signatures. Nobody I work with (at MS) knew about it until it hit the news. Most of them thought stopping services was idiotic as that would make it harder to get the children back together with their parents.

I suspect this also has an absurdly small number of people supporting it.

If 300 is the guideline for 130,000 people to make it representative of those people, then you can probably find 300 people at MS who support anything including (unfortunately) atrocities.

Trash article is trash, we should support our forces that allow us to keep doing what we do in the safety or our homes and businesses. If MS feels it's appropriate to bid then our management has already taken into account the potential social ramifications of doing so.

It bothers me more that this is considered news than anything else. It should be talked about, but short of actually getting at least a full percentage of the employees, and honestly you should hit at least hit 5% so you exceed the number of people that are let go yearly for poor performance then it's not really MS employees so much as some people who also happen to work at Microsoft are opposed to MS taking this contract. Saying MS employees intentional makes it sound like there is a significant base of MS employees against this, I don't believe that is currently the case.
 
But around half the "bad" people in the world could be conservative leaning, so they must be okay with at least stomping down or killing them using the cloud/AI/defensenet right? Solution: Just bid on half off it :p
 
BloodyIron said:
Look, it's no joke that militaries around the world have developed many things that do in fact improve the lives of humans worldwide.

But don't you guys want to eventually have a human race where we stop killing each other and instead work on bettering all of humanity?

I'm of the mindset that there needs to be that outcome, one day, where we're completely done waging war on our own species. And perhaps opting out of this can take us just that much closer to it.

Statistically speaking, those of us in North America are experiencing the safest point in history ever (apart from climate change). And that is primarily due to all the hard work of our militaries (more than one) in the past.

But when are we going to kick up our feet, and say "okay, that's enough", and we just all enjoy some cold ones... Together.

You want to live forever? I do.
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I agree and this is a nice goal but still incredibly naive in current year. Any attempt to "open up a cold one with the boys" with the rest of the world just ends up with us getting screwed or buildings crashing down.
 
As an IT professional in the DMV, I think any project important enough to have this sort of price tag should NOT be a contract. I am private sector but have worked with and personally know many contractors/subcontractors. Any of them will tell you, it is a race to the bottom every time. Without ranting at length - I think the problems of the bidding/contract system are not the fault of contractors, but rather the process itself (being slow and breeding mediocrity).

With a contract, you do not buy the best parts, you rarely pay for the best people, (to some extent) you do not care about the end result. Any goal devolves into meeting a deadline with the minimum viable product. The mentality surrounding contracted projects is asinine and leads to no accountability.

If it involves national security or defense, why not do this internally? If necessary, create a department just for this purpose, then hire the best people to work on the project directly.
 
SamuelL421 said:
As an IT professional in the DMV, I think any project important enough to have this sort of price tag should NOT be a contract. I am private sector but have worked with and personally know many contractors/subcontractors. Any of them will tell you, it is a race to the bottom every time. Without ranting at length - I think the problems of the bidding/contract system are not the fault of contractors, but rather the process itself (being slow and breeding mediocrity).

With a contract, you do not buy the best parts, you rarely pay for the best people, (to some extent) you do not care about the end result. Any goal devolves into meeting a deadline with the minimum viable product. The mentality surrounding contracted projects is asinine and leads to no accountability.

If it involves national security or defense, why not do this internally? If necessary, create a department just for this purpose, then hire the best people to work on the project directly.
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Sadly, because:

It will cost more, a lot more.

It requires a lot of political clout to establish a new division/department. Just think of the simple battle over where to locate the building - that alone will turn into a political shit slinging contest to see who can land the jobs versus what the states/cities would be willing to give up to get it.

Contacts expire eventually. It’s a set cost (well, it’s supposes to be, they inevitably overrun) that’s just a line item in a budget. Departments are an entire budget onto themselves and run more or less in perpetuity.

I agree that it’s a better idea and it’s even necessary. Given the political climate where we can’t even agree to how pay for things that we already bought, I can’t see common sense winning out. Ever.
 
SamuelL421 said:
If it involves national security or defense, why not do this internally? If necessary, create a department just for this purpose, then hire the best people to work on the project directly.
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The problem is that DoD Civilian workforce pay structure can't match the price tag of what it takes to hire people who are competent in doing this.
 
seanreisk said:
. The military is allowed to analyze and review civilian products that might have a military purpose, a job I used to do in Fort Lewis. But they are almost forbidden from making their own stuff.
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Not exactly true-I work a program that is being designed to replace a system with a newer design laptop (due to not being able to run WIN10) and cable connections-all developmental work etc is being done internally through the goverement work force. Its a small production run (under a 100 systems) but I'm assuming its the most cost/time effective instead of outsourcing it.
 
seanreisk said:
They aren't supposed to. The military does not make 'things'.

If the military wants a tank, they ask for bids. If the military wants an airport, they request bids. If the military wants modernized logistics software, they make a proposal of what they want and ask for bids. If they want new software for battlefield management between artillery and armor, they request bids. If they want a nuclear missile with a silo to deploy it from, it goes out for bid. The military is allowed to analyze and review civilian products that might have a military purpose, a job I used to do in Fort Lewis. But they are almost forbidden from making their own stuff.
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Thanks for that explanation, I did not know that. It still seems crazy to me to not use the people you already employ to accomplish these things.
 
freeloader1969 said:
Thanks for that explanation, I did not know that. It still seems crazy to me to not use the people you already employ to accomplish these things.
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because they are busy doing other things-Not sure if you follow the US Military at all, but there has been a push to remove all unnessary training events because it was impacting them from actually doing their "real" jobs.

You get better bang for your buck to bid out to several different contractors when it comes to major projects anyways-if it was done sole source all the time, the price or even the expectations of performance of those products would be limited at best.
 
I wonder how they feel about the over $2 billion in DoD/Microsoft contracts in place just since 2016?
Nearly every DoD office has at least one computer running... Microsoft software. Where is the outrage over that?

Last time I checked the DoD's primary mission is to provide for the Nation's defense and prosecute the conflicts set before them. Either you support the DoD and it's mission or you don't. The same systems that are used by the military to send hurricane relief can send frigates and fighters too. If you don't believe in, or don't want to be a part of, the mission of The Department of Defense then don't, and don't work for a company that supports it while you cry about it as you cash your paycheck.
 
CombatChrisNC said:
I don't understand why an organization this large (DoD) wants to use the cloud anyway.

If you're a mom and pop operation it makes total sense. Medium and small enterprise? Ok, sure.

Multi-billion dollar operation? Oh hell no, you can buy your own and get ROI in months.
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For reference, The DoD isn't just one organization, it is many. For further reference, there are several home brew clouds in the DoD, they are not as effective or as agile as the commercial solutions.
 
If these individuals are so concerned about using Microsoft's Cloud AI for war, why aren't they protesting violence of any kind using that service, including Video Games?
 
CombatChrisNC said:
I don't understand why an organization this large (DoD) wants to use the cloud anyway.

If you're a mom and pop operation it makes total sense. Medium and small enterprise? Ok, sure.

Multi-billion dollar operation? Oh hell no, you can buy your own and get ROI in months.
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Good question! Whenever a set of events begs the question, I'm a strong proponent of actually asking *the* question being begged and then trying to answer it.

Some things seem immediately obvious, such as the fact that outsourcing this fits with the Republican party's stated objective to increasingly privatize what used to be traditional government services.

Others might be less obvious, such as the content of the discussion between Bezos and Trump a few months ago. Presumably this contract would have been one of the things if not the thing.

We can put that together with other facts we know, such as AWS already used by the CIA, and the fact that the bidding process requires certain elements that only AWS can provide...currently--unless some ragtag upstart is willing and able to compete with Amazon on this. The likelihood of that, or this contract benefiting veterans beyond those already working for Amazon, is teetering between slim and none in my opinion but I'd love to be proven wrong in this case.
 
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