Amazon Web Services Inc. Wednesday evening filed a motion to stop further work on the Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud computing project.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI contract was awarded to Microsoft Corp. last year after a hotly contested competition. The contract, with a value of up to $10 billion over 10 years, was expected until very late in the process to be awarded to Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing company.

The latest motion asks that the Department of Defense and Microsoft stop the contract performance until a court decides on AWS’ protest filed last year. Just two weeks ago, AWS in a filing with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims had requested a temporary halt to the work. That request for a temporary restraining order was expected to be filed formally on Jan. 24 and a decision was expected on Feb. 11.

However, AWS tonight issued a statement explaining why it’s doubling down on trying to stop the work.

“It is common practice to stay contract performance while a protest is pending and it’s important that the numerous evaluation errors and blatant political interference that impacted the JEDI award decision be reviewed,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. “AWS is absolutely committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts and to an expeditious legal process that resolves this matter as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft has already started working on JEDI, President Brad Smith said in December. He described it as a continuation of the technical preparations it did before winning the deal.

Although AWS declined to provide further details on its latest motion, it has referred in the past to what it views as improper pressure from President Donald Trump that caused DOD officials to award JEDI to Microsoft instead. In its initial suit filed in December, AWS said that the interference took the form of “public and behind-the-scenes attacks” by Trump against Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy told SiliconANGLE in November that he believes there was “a significant amount of political interference” and added that “in any objective apples-to-apples comparison of our platform versus others, you don’t end up with the conclusion that they made.”

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which has run many hard-hitting stories about Trump. According to the New York Times, “a speechwriter for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who over time became an enthusiast of moving Pentagon operations to the cloud, alleged in a book scheduled for publication next week that Mr. Trump had wanted to ‘screw’ Amazon and give the contract to another company.”

The full contract amount for JEDI depends on whether services are delivered as specified in the first couple of years, so there’s no guarantee that Microsoft would get the full award. But the contract win immediately catapulted Microsoft, already growing its cloud operation faster than AWS’ albeit from a much smaller base, into a more formidable competitor in cloud computing.

Photo: AutoGirl/Pixabay