Controversy is growing as the Department of Defense (DOD) nears awarding a massive contract to move the Pentagon and America’s military to cloud computing and overhaul its information technology (IT) data systems. The end result may well be a national security disaster.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) is a 10-year, $10 billion contract that would award one computing service responsibility for modernizing DOD’s IT system, including the handling of all sensitive material, nuclear weapon design information, and classified NATO data.

So what is all the commotion with the federal government finally addressing the technology gaps that could cause a national security disaster? For starters, JEDI will be awarded to one vendor, with Amazon considered the expected winner. In March, the Pentagon announced its decision to go with one company in a winner-take-all contract deal. The contract will be awarded in September.

“Whichever one of you wins this, I’m challenging you to bring your A-game,” Air Force Brig. Gen. David Krumm told industry representatives during a briefing announcing its winner-take-all competition. The Pentagon released a draft request for proposal, in which companies vying to compete had two weeks to submit a proposal.

However, the Pentagon refused to provide a formal justification for a single award contract, claiming only that choosing a single company would “help expedite the rollout of the enterprise-wide cloud initiative” and is “the best approach for rapidly delivering new capabilities to U.S. forces deployed worldwide.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is considered to be the undisputed leader in winning a massive contract deal with the Department of Defense. With Amazon favored, industry leaders such as Google, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft fear that giving a single-provider contract over multiple contract awards would “close the market to just that vendor,” cause technology lock-in, damage innovation, and harm innovation by dissuading firms from entering the public sector marketplace.

“The pace of innovation and intensity of competition among our member companies in the cloud marketplace portends great benefits to DOD and the entire public sector. As competition intensifies, prices fall, innovation accelerates, and performance improves,” the IT Alliance for Public Sector, which includes industry groups, wrote in a letter to the House Armed Services Committee.

“The current strategy dilutes the benefits of best practices, strongly increasing the likelihood of vendor and technology lock-in, and negatively impacting innovation, costs, and security,” the alliance wrote.

Another reason companies worry that AWS is favored is its having existing government clearance from previous contract awards. In February, the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley-based innovation unit awarded Amazon “premier consulting partner” REAN Cloud LLC a $950 million contract to help migrate its data to the cloud.

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Oracle protested the REAN contract to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), stating the process was “shrouded in secrecy,” and that the move was “opening a door for Amazon Web Services.”  This led the DOD, claiming to be unaware of the acquisition, to award REAN a $65 million contract, reducing the scope of work to only U.S. Transportation Command applications.

Despite all these concerns from technology companies, DOD argued that multiple cloud providers would “exponentially increase the complexity.” It also refused to discuss why it isn’t breaking JEDI into pieces, emphasizing the importance of bringing “scattered data together in one place to meet war fighting needs.”

The final request for proposal, detailing requirements that companies would need to secure the contract, was set to be released in May, with a contract being award as soon as September. However, DOD last week has delayed indefinitely its final request proposals, citing “extensive industry interest” as a way to avoid “a rush to failure.”

Despite DOD’s delaying its final requests for proposals, stating it is “carefully weighing more than 1,000 industry comments” submitted in response to a draft request proposal, it is still committed to awarding an initial two-year contract, with the option of adding up to eight more years, to just one winner, according to Bloomberg News.

Is DOD dismissing a competitive market just to award a monopoly contract, possibly to AWS, despite that a sole-source cloud provider is problematic? The DOD believes that the multiple companies vying for the contract are “capable of meeting the requirements” for a “full and open competition.”

In a recently released 15-page report to Congress, DOD defended its reasoning for not using multiple vendors, claiming that “managing security and data accessibility between clouds” is prone “to human error or resource limitation.”

In putting so many eggs into one basket, the DOD would contradict its “full and open competition” pledge by making AWS the lone winner. According to Business Insider, DOD agencies are “sure that Amazon will be awarded the contract,” due to the department’s preparation for a transition to GovCloud, an Amazon cloud infrastructure designed specifically for government use.

Other evidence that shows cronyism on behalf of AWS was a recent story by Washingtonian, reporting a “cozy relationship” between the possible contractor (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) and the decision-maker (Secretary of Defense James Mattis).

With AWS considered the biggest cloud computing service compared to its competitors, leading the market with over 44 percent of the cloud infrastructure market revenue, there are alarming reports that suggest a single bidder award could put American national security data at risk.

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Just last year, Amazon sold computing equipment used for its cloud services to its local partner in China, a move that forced U.S. companies to essentially transfer ownership and operations of their cloud systems to Chinese partners.

With the Chinese government’s desire to control cyberspace, U.S. tech companies have been constrained to operate normally in the global perspective, leading to inefficiency and higher risk of cyberthreats.

In awarding Amazon the DOD data cloud contract to AWS, it is practically handing all of America’s defense data over to the Chinese government and hackers. This is a dangerous deal and a recipe for a major disaster.

To prevent a national security disaster from ever happening due to DOD’s selecting a service that has sold its computing equipment to our competitor, the Pentagon must change its approach to the JEDI contract award.

Unfortunately, it appears the Pentagon isn’t budging. Unless perhaps the president tweets that AWS is a bad deal! We shall see.

Mona Salama is a freelance writer based in New York City who previously worked as a reporter for Breitbart News and Politichicks.com.