A FEDERAL judge yesterday temporarily blocked the US military from awarding a US$10 billion (RM41.4 billion) cloud computing contract to Microsoft after Amazon claimed the process was tainted by politics.

A preliminary injunction requested by Amazon was issued by judge Patricia Campbell-Smith, barring the Defence Department from starting work on the contract known as Jedi, according to a summary of the ruling.

Details of the ruling were sealed for unspecified reasons.

Amazon said it was shut out of the deal because of President Donald Trump’s vendetta against the company and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos.

It is seeking testimony from Trump and other top officials on the reasons for awarding the 10-year, US$10 billion military cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

“We are disappointed in today’s ruling, and believe the actions taken in this litigation have unnecessarily delayed implementing (the Defence Department’s) modernisation strategy and deprived our war fighters of a set of capabilities they urgently need,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt Col Robert Carver.

He said the department remains confident in its decision to award the contract to Microsoft.

The Jedi, or Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure, programme will ultimately see all military branches sharing information in a cloud-based system boosted by artificial intelligence.

An earlier court filing by Amazon detailed alleged errors that ended with Microsoft being chosen over its Amazon Web Services cloud computing division, part of the technology group led by Bezos.

Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, is a frequent target of the US president, who claims the newspaper is biased against him.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said it hopes to prevail after the merits of the case are heard in court.

“We have confidence in the Defence Department, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the war fighter are best met by Microsoft,” said Frank Shaw, the company’s vice-president of communications.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – AFP, February 14, 2020.