The DoD has said that the cloud contract, which will provide storage, AI processing, machine learning and more is essential to modernizing the US military. Oracle and IBM bid along with Microsoft and Amazon, but were eliminated in 2018. Oracle challenged the decision, but an appeal court recently denied its claim.

Microsoft said that the DoD probe validated its bid. “We appreciate that after careful review, the DoD confirmed that we offered the right technology and the best value,” the company told TechCrunch in a statement. “We’re ready to get to work and make sure that those who serve our country have access to this much needed technology.”

Amazon: “On JEDI, President Trump reportedly ordered former Secretary Mattis to ‘screw’ Amazon, blatantly interfered in an active procurement, directed his subordinate to conduct an unorthodox ‘review’ prior to a contract award announcement and then stonewalled an investigation into his own political interference.”

Amazon, meanwhile, railed against the decision. In its public sector blog, the company said it would continue to fight the contract award, calling it a “flawed, biased and politically corrupted decision.” It also referred to past statements made by President Trump against Amazon: “The question we continue to ask ourselves is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the Department of Defense to pursue his own personal and political ends?”

The JEDI contract is meant to modernize the Department of Defense’s cloud infrastructure. Amazon and Microsoft were the final contenders, and after the contract went to Microsoft, Amazon claimed that President Trump “launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS to harm his perceived political enemy-Jeffrey P. Bezos.”

Last month, Amazon asked the court to pause Microsoft’s work on the project, due to alleged “deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias” in the evaluation process. The court granted that motion today.

Earlier this week, unsealed court documents revealed that Amazon wants to question President Trump, along with Dana Deasy, the Defense Department’s chief information officer, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Thursday’s ruling seems to be the government’s first step towards seeing if there is any legitimacy to Amazon’s claim. That doesn’t mean the outcome is going to change, but the decision may at least be reviewed.

In court documents unsealed Monday, Amazon said it is looking to depose “individuals who were instrumental” in the JEDI selection process, including Dana Deasy, the Defense Department’s chief information officer, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Defense Secretary James Mattis.

The Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft last October. The project is meant to modernize the DoD’s cloud infrastructure and connect different divisions within the agency, which currently has over 500 separate clouds. Amazon quickly challenged the decision and filed a lawsuit. The company claims Trump’s “personal vendetta” and instruction to “screw Amazon” cost it the contract.

In a statement provided to CNBC, an Amazon Web Service spokesperson said:

“President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his position as President and Commander in Chief to interfere with government functions – including federal procurements – to advance his personal agenda. The preservation of public confidence in the nation’s procurement process requires discovery and supplementation of the administrative record, particularly in light of President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon.’ The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.”

Drone Hunter uses radar to track unauthorized drones. When the target is in range, Drone Hunter shoots it with a web-like net and a kind of Spider Man-style flair. According to Defense One, the Pentagon is spending millions on the system.

Catching drones in mind-air offers a few benefits over shooting them out of the sky or trying to intercept their communication signals. The net approach means the drone isn’t going to crash on any bystanders, and if the drone isn’t obliterated, the DoD can better investigate who’s behind it.

The DoD also purchased other Fortem products, including SkyDome Network, which can autonomously monitor an environment to look out for unauthorized drones and distinguish between other flying objects — so this shouldn’t take down the local birds. If SkyDome finds a threatening drone, it can notify personnel or deploy the Drone Hunter autonomously.

As we’ve seen at several busy international airports, drones can cause major delays and havoc. A system like this could potentially protect against interruptions like those. Though, it’s definitely not the only solution. The UK is working on high-energy lasers that could zap drones and missiles out of the sky. Heathrow Airport recently introduced a “Counter Drone” system to detect and track unauthorized drones, and several years ago, Tokyo demonstrated its own drone-catching net.

Bezos likewise made it clear that Amazon would continue to fight for more military business even after the Pentagon spurned it in favor of Microsoft for the JEDI contract. “We are going to support the Department of Defense, this country is important,” he said.

The tech pioneer isn’t uniformly supportive of the government, and Amazon has accused the Defense Department of handing the JEDI contract to Microsoft due to President Trump’s avowed anti-Amazon bias. Bezos is already steeped in public sector business, though, including contested facial recognition projects and long-term plans for Blue Origin to handle military rocket launches.

His tone isn’t that far off from Microsoft, which has defended its military contracts against employees who objected to their work being used for combat-related purposes. It suggests that there won’t be much sympathy for critics in at least some bigger tech companies. These executives have firm agendas, and they expect their staff to follow through regardless of ethical concerns.

The draft demands equitable AI that avoids “unintended bias” in algorithms, such as racism or sexism. AI could lead to people being treated “unfairly,” the board said, even if they’re not necessarily in life-and-death situations. The board called on the military to ensure that its data sources were neutral, not just the code itself. Bias could be useful for targeting key combatants or minimizing civilian casualties, but not in some situations.

The documents also call for “governable” AI that can stop itself if it detects that it’s about to cause unnecessary harm and stop itself (or switch to a human operator) in time. This wouldn’t greenlight fully automated weapons, but it would reduce the chances of AI going rogue. Accordingly, the draft includes a call for “traceable” AI output that lets people see how a system reached its conclusion.

While the draft is promising, there’s still the challenge of implementing it in practice. It’s easy to promise more accountable and trustworthy AI, it’s another thing to ensure that every military branch follows those ideals with every project. As Defense One observed, though, the Department may have an advantage over tech companies in that it’s starting with a relatively blank slate. It doesn’t have to make exceptions for current AI projects or else rethink its existing strategy — the guidelines should be there from day one.

After a couple years of competition, the US Department of Defense has awarded a lucrative contract for cloud computing services to Microsoft. It beat out Amazon, the only other remaining competitor after others were weeded out or, in the case of Google, dropped out citing “AI principles.” Dubbed the Jedi Cloud contract, it could be worth $10 billion over the next ten years.

In a statement, DoD Chief information Office Dana Deasy said “The National Defense Strategy dictates that we must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform. The DOD Digital Modernization Strategy was created to support this imperative. This award is an important step in execution of the Digital Modernization Strategy.”

Developing…

Matthew Goodwin, a Northeastern University behavioral scientist, created the wearable. While the initial tests show promise, Goodwin and his team of researchers only observed 20 children with autism over a period of 87 hours. They tracked each aggressive episode and corresponding physiological changes and then fed that data into their model. Next, Goodwin hopes to test the device with 240 individuals — thanks in part to funding from the Department of Defense.

“As our data set grows and we use more sophisticated machine learning models, I think we might get more than 60 seconds,” Goodwin said. While the technology is still deep in development, it could make a difference in the lives of people with autism, as well as their families and caretakers. It would join other tech like Google Glass, AI and educational apps that have all been used to help individuals with autism.