They aren’t moving to “the Cloud” as in AWS or Azure, they’re just moving to bigger/faster/better Gov-owned data center(s). Business as usual.
Often, switching to "a cloud" simply means using a managed service. Either managed by another company/agency, or by another team in the same company/agency. That means it's not necessarily a technical decision, it's more about making their employees productive. The important thing to realize here for hackers is that not everybody has the same tech skills and needs.
As opposed to the (more flexible) hardware in the basement server room, "The Cloud" is bought as a product for a specific purpose. The benefit to end-users is that they can concentrate on their core business, whatever that might be:
- Cloud CRM customers can concentrate on CRM stuff. They don't have to worry about hardware, server administration, etc.
- Application developers using a PaaS can concentrate on their app. The PaaS handles the lower levels: it keeps the app running, load balances traffic, keeps the app responsive (e.g. by scaling up number of app instances).
- Operators of a PaaS can rely on a managed infrastructure layer.
Not having to have in-house experts can be an advantage for companies/agencies that have difficulties attracting the right talent. And even for experts, working on the highest possible abstraction level, e.g. using a PaaS or "serverless" when writing an app, can improve efficiency a lot.
Depending on the type of service, there are a few other benefits that people expect from "The Cloud", such as elasticity.
Self-service and instant availability of resources to end-users is a big one for bureaucratic environments. My team needs a database. I can create one myself through The Cloud, and I don't have to go trough "the official channels" for a permit and then ask a DBA to actually do the work. The Cloud can work around old processes because it comes with risk management built-in. My team can have a resource limit, up to which we can flexibly book any resources we need. Auditing is also built-in. Operators of The Cloud can easily monitor resource usage across teams.
It is also potentially subversive because of the consequent ability it gives intelligence agencies to suborn their political masters. For an existence proof, look at the troubles that the orange man is having with his intelligence agencies.
Even worse, it is already happening.
"Five Eyes act as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the known laws of its own countries". Documents leaked by in 2013 revealed that the Five Eyes have been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens."
Troubles for which I, for one, am eternally grateful.