We’ve long chronicled the incredibly obnoxious government cronyism incredibly huge Amazon (Market Cap: $779 billion) garners.
Uber-Crony Amazon – Is About To Get The Biggest Crony Deal In DC’s Awful History
Amazon: Government – And Its Crony, Monopoly Straight-Jacket
How Crony Corrupt Is Amazon? The Right And Left Are Both Nauseated By It
Amazon gets massive cronyism from the federal government. Amazon gets massive cronyism from state and local governments.
Big Government is eminently bribable. Big Business Amazon – is more than willing to do the Big Government bribing. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Washington, DC is an enormous fetid and festering Swamp. Filled to overwhelming with Deep State bureaucrats – issuing to crony Swamp Creatures in Pez-dispenser-fashion tens of thousands of awful crony deals.
If we are to begin unwinding this giant nightmare mess – we must begin somewhere.
A journey of a thousand miles – begins with a single step.
How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
How Does One Stop Cronyism? One Crony At A Time
Let’s take a step and have a bite, shall we?
Pentagon to Review Amazon Employee’s Influence Over $10 Billion Government Contract:
“The Pentagon is reviewing whether Amazon Web Service created a conflict of interest when it hired a former Defense Department employee who once claimed he was ‘leading the effort’ to help the agency move its computing systems to the cloud, court records show.
“Deap Ubhi had worked at Amazon Web Services before joining the Defense Department and now is back at the company after less than two years – a career path that is now a point of contention in the competition for a $10 billion contract to build and manage much of the cloud computing services for the Pentagon.”
Hold on right there – did you get that?
The Barack Obama Administration created a sub-agency within the Defense Department (DoD) – the Defense Digital Service – in charge of purchasing contractor tech.
The Obama Admin hired to head that sub-agency – Deap Ubhi, a guy from Amazon’s cloud computing company…Amazon Web Services (AWS).
AWS’ ex-employee Ubhi “led the effort” – the DoDs $10 billion cloud computing contract process. Which was designed and drafted in such a way – that only AWS met the contractor description.
Massive cronyism – which led to a great many headlines like this:
Ubhi’s AWS crony work in the DoD done, AWS’s ex-employee left the DoD…and went back to work for AWS.
That doesn’t seem at all corrupt.
But wait – there’s more:
“(I)n a new lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Oracle…alleged Ubhi had enormous influence over the contract, and that he pushed for the Pentagon to award a single contract for a cloud system, instead of several as some in industry have been advocating.”
This single provider thing for all of the DoD – makes zero technical sense. If you have one provider – and it goes offline – the entire DoD goes offline. That’s just stupid.
This single provider thing for all of the DoD – only makes sense when looking at it through an AWS cronyism prism.
Why would Ubhi split up the $10 billion amongst multiple providers – when he can hand it all to his once-and-future employer? National security and the lives of military men and women – be damned.
But wait – there’s more:
“While at the Pentagon, Ubhi publicly praised Amazon and repeatedly referred to himself as an ‘Amazonian’….
“‘Once an Amazonian, always an Amazonian. Thank you @Jeff Bezos,” he tweeted on Jan. 30, 2017, in response to Bezos pledging to fight President Donald Trump’s immigration stance.
“In a blog post while at the Pentagon, Ubhi wrote that he was ‘currently leading the effort to accelerate adoption of the cloud for the Department of Defense.’ He added that, ‘Having been a technical product person, a startup founder, an Amazonian, I deeply understand the broad-ranging impact this could have for the DoD.’”
If you’re Amazon – and you’re looking to land a $10 billion DoD contract – it certainly helps to have a self-declared “Amazonian” in charge of crafting the deal. A guy once in your employ – who will soon again be in your employ.
But wait – there’s more:
“Aside from his job at the Pentagon, (Ubhi) had been running a start-up that helped restaurants do business online, a business that drew interest from Amazon.”
“Drew interest from Amazon,” eh? We previously noted this profound bizarreness – which was ripe for just this sort of additional corruption:
“Ubhi is simultaneously working for the government – and his own private company. How very Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton of him.
“‘Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner’s Wife, Consulted For Outside Clients While At State Department’
“Ubhi’s private sector Tablehero seems innocuous enough: ‘Bringing intelligence to hospitality. Tablehero is the simplest platform to build your restaurant business on the internet.’
“But we don’t know who Tablehero’s clients are. Could his private company be ‘hired’ – to affect his decision-making in his government gig?”
But wait – there’s more:
“In October 2017, Ubhi recused himself from the procurement process.”
Well yeah, Ubhi’s AWS crony work was done. How do we know Ubhi’s crony work was done?:
“(S)oon after his recusal, Ubhi left the Pentagon to return to Amazon Web Services (AWS).”
Now that a deeper look into AWS’ massive DoD cronyism is taking place – is AWS being helpful? Of course not:
“(AWS) declined to make Ubhi available for comment….Ubhi did not respond to requests for comment.”
Here’s hoping some judges see the patently obvious crony corruption going on – and rule accordingly.
Here’s hoping the DoD sees the patently obvious crony corruption going on – and rules Amazon is no longer eligible for contractor consideration.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member