Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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The CIA is not politics though. Politics require highlighting. You'd be surprised how little the CIA highlights of what it's doing, and what that costs. Contrasted against the military, which tends to highlight almost everything of what it's doing, and what that costs.

And 10 billion over 10 years is what? Maybe 3 to 5% of Amazon's yearly revenue? You really want to be at the epicenter of the shitstorm that will happen if the project goes over budget and you still haven't delivered anything anyone in the DoD actually uses? (Maybe I shouldn't have said "if the project goes over" but "when"?) Especially being a big tech firm nowadays?

And you're gonna step into all that unnecessary drama for access to a 10 year / 10 billion project?

I don't think so. Not for a billion a year in revenue when you're already sitting at over 230 billion a year in revenue. (Or even just the over 30 billion a year that AWS alone is sitting at.)

Admit it man, politics being what they are these days, particularly for big tech firms, it's just not worth it.

You must contend with politics working for USG at any level for any department/agency. There are plenty of very nasty, bitter politics within each of the intelligence agencies, as well as, across the larger intelligence community (IC). These are massive organizations with very large budgets. Because these battles occur in classified settings, they are not visible to the public. I highly doubt that AWS hasn't had to content with a myriad of political battles within CIA, not the least of which being, groups within the CIA who remain skeptical about "cloud" and trusting a third-party with their data.

But they don't care about any political battle invisible to the market.

That's the point.

It's the shitstorms that generate the tweetstorms that impact their larger bottom line.

Of course they care about those battles. Not only could they impact their renewal and/or trigger large penalties, but they can (and often do with large contracts) percolate up to Congressional oversight committees. Unless you have experienced intensity of political battles within the IC, it is impossible to understand their stakes (in terms of both money and reputation) for $100 million+ programs of record.

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