In a bid to acquire a lucrative Pentagon contract, Amazon has hired a lobbyist closely aligned with President Trump. In response, their competitors are calling foul play. Miller Time? Amazon Web Services hired Jeff Miller to lobby for the company, which is trying to secure a contract to provide cloud computing services to a number of military agencies. The $10-billion defense contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure is one of the hottest tickets in town, as Microsoft has also thrown its hat in the ring, while Oracle and IBM were ruled out earlier this year. Bundle Up Miller is one of more than 400 campaign bundlers raising funds for Trump’s reelection effort; having raised more than $1 million. Best of Enemies Perhaps Amazon thought it needs every advantage it could get, as there’s famously no love lost between Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Taking Stock IBM and Oracle filed complaints with the Government Accountability Office, saying that Amazon had an unfair advantage in the cloud computing field. Oracle has also alleged that Amazon secretly negotiated a job offer with then-Department of Defense official Deap Ubhi, who left the department in 2017 to take a job at Amazon. Oracle alleged that Ubhi was doing preliminary research for the JEDI program while Amazon was courting him with stock options. Employees Only While the contract would be a huge payday for Amazon, not everyone the tech world is pleased with the idea, as employees at Google successfully pressured the tech overlords to drop its pursuit, worrying about ethical implications. A similar push from Microsoft employees fell on deaf ears. Amazon employees also urged the company to rethink the contract, as did its shareholders. Amazon shareholders and employees, already unhappy with the company’s facial recognition technology will probably have something to say soon. -Michael Tedder Photo by REUTERS