Judge orders Pentagon to halt ‘war cloud’ work amid Amazon challenge

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Pentagon to halt its work on a controversial cloud-computing contract amid a court challenge by Amazon, notching a major win for the tech giant as it seeks to prove that President Trump improperly interfered to keep the $10 billion contract away from Amazon.

The Court of Federal Claims is granting Amazon’s request to stop the Pentagon from forging ahead with the cloud-computing project until the lawsuit is settled. The Department of Defense was planning to work with Microsoft, the company that received the contract over Amazon last year, to implement a sweeping cloud infrastructure across the entire department despite Amazon’s legal challenge.

Microsoft, which has said little publicly about Amazon’s court challenge, said in a statement Thursday it is “disappointed” by the judge’s decision to delay the contract implementation but believes the facts are on its side.

“While we are disappointed with the additional delay, we believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require,” Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of communications, said.

“We have confidence in the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft,” Shaw said.

Amazon and the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.