Judge clears way for showdown between Amazon and Microsoft over Pentagon 'war cloud' contract

A judge has cleared the way for a showdown between tech giants Amazon and Microsoft to provide a $10bn computing contract that has been called the “Pentagon war cloud”.

The two companies, both based in Seattle, were among several major companies that bid to provide the US military with cloud computing and artificial intelligence on the battlefield as part of the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure plan, or JEDI.

Oracle and IBM were had been cut from the competition at a previous stage, but Oracle had filed a legal challenge, alleging a conflict of interest and claiming the Pentagon had shown bias towards Amazon.