Blue Origin hires advisory firm linked to messy JEDI contract process

[Elderberry]

ARS Technica by Eric Berger - 9/1/2021

Pallas Advisors was co-founded by two former advisors to Jim Mattis.

After losing out on a multibillion dollar NASA contract for a lunar lander to SpaceX in April, Blue Origin has hired a high-profile strategic advisory firm named Pallas Advisors. These high-profile advisors have helped the company as it has gone on to protest the contract loss and eventually sue the space agency.

The founding partners of the Washington, DC-based advisory firm, Sally Donnelly and Tony DeMartino, are well-known to Jeff Bezos, the founder of both Amazon and Blue Origin. Both Donnelly and DeMartino previously worked as consultants to Amazon before taking jobs at the Department of Defense in 2017, during the Trump administration. There, they gained some unwelcome public notoriety.

At the Pentagon, Donnelly served as a senior advisor to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and DeMartino worked as his deputy chief of staff. During their time in government service, both Donnelly and DeMartino became embroiled in the controversy surrounding the US Department of Defense award to Microsoft for the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI contract, for military cloud computing services.

The short version of the story is this: competitors in the JEDI contract fight say the pair left Amazon consultancy jobs to work for the Department of Defense in 2017, where they were in position to influence the development of the contract bidding process in favor of Amazon. Donnelly and DeMartino have denied that they acted improperly, and an Inspector General's report largely cleared them. However, the controversy has recently gained new life as Congress investigates the matter.
The longer story

The alleged role played by Donnelly and DeMartino in the JEDI contract first came to light in a "dossier" that circulated in Washington, DC, as the bid process for the coveted cloud computing contract heated up. The unverified dossier, which was reported upon in depth by Bloomberg, asserts that Donnelly and DeMartino rigged the JEDI contract in favor of Amazon.

More: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/blue-origin-hires-advisory-firm-linked-to-messy-jedi-contract-process/

[Elderberry]

Elon Musk Takes a Dig at Jeff Bezos on Twitter, Says Blue Origin Founder Investing in ‘Shady Lobbyists’

Samachar Central by Hemalata Nehete 9/5/2021

The battle for domination of space by private firms is not new. The latest competition saw Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos tussle in the race to make commercial space tourism a reality. Now, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken a swipe at Bezos’ Blue Origin for hiring a high-profile strategic advisory firm after it lost a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,540 crores) NASA lunar lander contract to SpaceX. Without naming Bezos, Musk said the billionaire should “consider spending some money” on actual lunar lander hardware, instead of “shady lobbyists.”

This appears to suggest that the bid by Blue Origin required more technical expertise.

Blue Origin has already sued the US government over the contract. In its lawsuit filed in the US Court of Federal Claims, the company said it is “an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System.”

Under its Artemis programme, NASA had sought proposals for a spacecraft that would carry astronauts to the lunar surface. In April, the US space agency awarded the contract to SpaceX and asked it to build a spacecraft to be able to take humans to the moon again by 2024.

Other bidders, including Blue Origin, protested the contract being given to a single venture, arguing that NASA was required to make multiple awards. Blue Origin contended that NASA also favoured SpaceX by letting it revise its pricing. It has strongly lobbied to ensure the decision is reversed. Bezos’ company has also filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, which upheld NASA’s decision in July.

More: https://samacharcentral.com/elon-musk-takes-a-dig-at-jeff-bezos-on-twitter-says-blue-origin-founder-investing-in-shady-lobbyists/