Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, has announced that the company wants to bid on contracts of the U.S. government and the army, even if some employees there have a problem …with you. That’s what TechCrunch reports. The company also bid on the Pentagon’s JEDI contract.
The JEDI contract stands for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. It is a project in which the Pentagon wants to switch to the cloud as much as possible. One company gets the project, giving the chosen cloud provider a pretty big responsibility.
Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, among others, bid on the contract. Google decided earlier this year not to participate in bidding, because it would not fit within its AI principles and it did not have certain government certifications. Earlier in October, Microsoft announced that it did have those certifications.
Smith now says that there are some ethical considerations behind today’s most advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence. He also mentioned ways in which they could be abused. But at the same time Smith emphasized that Microsoft continues to work with the government and the army.
Best technologies
“First of all, we believe in strong protection for the United States and we want the people who protect it to have access to the nation’s best technology, including Microsoft’s,” said Smith. For this reason, the company wants to win the JEDI contract, even if it criticises the fact that only one company can win. Smith specifically mentioned the JEDI contract as an example of the company’s desire to work closely with the government.
“Recently, Microsoft offered on a major security project. It is the JEDI contract, which will reengineer the entire IT infrastructure of the Ministry of Defence, from the Pentagon to support in the field of our service men and women. The contract is not given, but it is an example of the work we want to do.”
Microsoft indicates that it wants to support people in the country, especially those who serve the country. This includes having access to the best technologies. Smith also says he thinks it’s important for tech companies to be part of the discussion when the government uses advanced technologies. “But we can’t expect these new developments to be handled wisely as the tech sector’s most knowledgeable about technology withdraws from the discussion.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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