"AWS does have a point about availability of computing resources being a problem for the Feds, as NASA last year acknowledged that its supercomputer fleet is "oversubscribed and overburdened." Access to AWS resources, however, may not be the answer to NASA's woes given the agency once botched a cloud storage system by failing to understand how Amazon charges for data downloads."
"Another thing to consider about AWS's announcement is whether it represents additional capital expenditure on top of the already foreshadowed $125-billion-plus that Amazon plans to spend on cloudy infrastructure in FY 2026. It's possible this announcement is just AWS adding some detail to its spending plan. Speaking of detail, there's none about the timeline for completing these federal server farms."
"As The Register has reported, the Pentagon's IT estate has been a mess for years and reforms aren't making much of a dent in its problems. The entire federal government has tried - and mostly failed - to standardize its categorization of IT costs and resources since 2017. The Trump administration's initial effort to address Washingtonian waste, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is alleged to have leaked data and ignored cybersecurity standards."
AWS announced plans to build 1.3 gigawatts of compute capacity in datacenters dedicated to the US government, with costs up to $50 billion and construction starting in 2026. The facilities will add AI and supercomputing capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. The company frames the investment as removing technology barriers and advancing American leadership in the AI era. Federal technology challenges include a troubled Pentagon IT estate, failed efforts to standardize IT cost categorization since 2017, and past initiatives accused of data leaks and weak cybersecurity. NASA's supercomputers are oversubscribed, and agency cloud billing errors illustrate procurement and usage risks. The announcement may overlap with Amazon's existing $125 billion-plus FY2026 infrastructure spending and lacks a completion timeline.
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