Anthropic, Google and xAI will join OpenAI on the CDAO’s nascent effort to partner with industry on pioneering artificial intelligence projects focused on national security applications. Under the individual contracts — each worth up to $200 million — the Pentagon will have access to some of the most advanced AI capabilities developed by the four companies, including large language models, agentic AI workflows, cloud-based infrastructure and more.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said in a statement. “Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”

OpenAI received the first contract for the effort June 17 and will create prototypes of agentic workflows for national security missions. According to CDAO, work with all four vendors will expand the Pentagon’s experience with emerging AI capabilities, as well as give the companies better insights into how their technology can benefit the department.

The contract with CDAO is also another win for xAI, which is owned by Musk — who previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts but recently had a falling out with President Donald Trump over legislation and other issues — and develops the generative AI tool called Grok. The company announced Monday that it was launching a new suite of AI tools for U.S. government users known as “Grok for Government.” The platform is now available to purchase by federal agencies through the General Services Administration, according to a post on X, which Musk also owns.

In a blog post published Monday, Jim Kelly, Google Public Sector’s vice president of federal sales, noted that the company will provide the Pentagon its Cloud Tensor Processing Units for training AI models, AI-powered agents via Google’s Agentspace, and access to the company’s infrastructure based in the contiguous United States.

“These advanced AI solutions will enable the DoD to effectively address defense challenges and scale the adoption of agentic AI across enterprise systems to drive innovation and efficiency with agile, proven technology,” Kelly wrote.

The announcement is the latest step the Defense Department has taken in recent months to accelerate adoption of AI-enabled capabilities developed by commercial companies — many of which have recently announced new business ventures focused on national security.

In June, Anthropic introduced a custom set of its Claude Gov AI models that are tailored specifically to defense use cases, ranging from operational planning to intelligence analysis. The same month, OpenAI launched a new initiative called “OpenAI for Government” that expands on its current partnerships with the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies — including custom AI models for national security.

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In December 2022, the Pentagon awarded Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft contracts spots on the $9 billion JWCC program — an effort that pivoted away from contracting a single vendor for the department’s first enterprise cloud capability under the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), and instead sought a multi-vendor acquisition approach. 

Since then, the department has awarded over $1 billion worth of task orders to vendors on the program, DISA Director Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner said Wednesday. Speaking during a keynote speech at the annual Department of the Air Force Information Technology and Cyberpower conference, Skinner noted the agency is now looking at how to build upon the initial program for its next phase, dubbed JWCC 2.0.

“What I would offer is, what it’s going to bring is even faster commercial cloud capability, greater diversity — where we can hope that we can have even more cloud services providers — and potentially have an option of not having task orders competed,” Skinner said. He did not elaborate on how many additional vendors DISA is considering adding to the program.

Under the current contracting mechanism for JWCC, the four cloud service providers are able to bid on task orders from various Defense Department components. The contract vehicle allows the department to buy commercial cloud capabilities that best fit customers’ needs directly from the service providers.

Skinner noted that moving forward, future JWCC iterations could include both task order competitions as well as a potential indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle as a way to provide “greater diversity and flexibility for the capability that we know we all need and are driving for.”

IDIQ contracts allow the Pentagon to purchase an unspecified amount of products or services under a specific timeframe, enabling the ability to place orders as needed up to a defined maximum amount specified in the initial contract.

DISA has not given a clear timeline on when the requirements for JWCC 2.0 will be released. Former DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman previously told DefenseScoop that he directed his office to conduct an after-action review of the entire JWCC effort prior to his departure in June.

“While I’m a huge fan of it, I know it’s not perfect,” he said. “What can we do better for JWCC 2.0? Are there things we can put into place to make [software-as-a-service] offerings easier to manage?”

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The company would essentially function as the Army’s third-party purchasing agent, helping it procure cloud service offerings on-demand “as a utility,” and renegotiating rates over time to encourage competition between providers so the Army can get the best deals.

“The Army requires an Enterprise scale capability to procure and manage Cloud Service Offerings (CSOs) from multiple Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to support the Army’s cloud migration effort,” according to a presolicitation released on Sam.gov this week.

In 2021, an other transaction agreement for Cloud Account Management Optimization (CAMO) was awarded to Novetta (which is now part of Accenture Federal Services) to develop a prototype process to help the service plan, budget for, and use commercial cloud services — and to provide cloud service provider (CSP) reselling services to the Army. That work had a period of performance of two years.

“Today, CAMO operates as the Army’s centralized CSP reseller and provides a web portal mechanism for customers to complete CSP account creation and funding tasks through a Government off the Shelf (GOTS) tool called the Army Cloud Management Portal (ACMP). The Army requires a contractor to take over CSP reselling services and operations and continual enhancement of ACMP,” according to the request for information released this week.

The ACMP is a funds-submission portal for cloud service provider services.

Accenture Federal Services declined to comment about the RFI.

The presolicitation comes as the Army’s investment in cloud capabilities is expected to soar. The Army’s total spend on cloud service providers within CAMO was $35 million in fiscal 2022, and it’s projected to ramp up to $281 million by fiscal 2026, according to a draft performance work statement released with the RFI. Meanwhile, contract line-item numbers are projected to increase from 170 to 927 during that time frame.

The Army is looking for a contractor to “resell CSOs, provide account and service provisioning, and billing management services to the [U.S. government] for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and any additional CSPs required … over the course of the contract at Department of Defense (DoD) Information Impact Level (IL) 2, 4 and 5 and 6, including both commercial and government regions,” per the draft performance work statement.

Offerings should include infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) available from each cloud service provider in contract scope that are approved for use by Uncle Sam. They should also include edge computing solutions, such as AWS Snowball/Outpost and Azure Edge/Stack, it noted.

AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Google are the leading cloud vendors. Each of them was awarded to compete for task orders under the Defense Department’s enterprise Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) program.

The Army is also keen on automation to facilitate its cloud efforts.

“Many of the current processes and procedures within the CSP account and services provisioning and billing management are manual today, and the contractor shall automate these processes and procedures to the greatest extent practicable to enable the Army to accelerate cloud migration,” per the draft performance work statement.

The contractor would also be expected to work closely with the organization that runs CloudTracker, a government-off-the-shelf, financial operations (FinOps) tool. This week, the Army released a separate RFI on Sam.gov for FinOps, which states that “given the sharp increase in cloud usage year over year, the Army requires additional FinOps capabilities and training for application owners and the Army’s Enterprise cloud environment.”

The envisioned base period of performance for the CSP reseller would be one year from date of award, with four one-year options, plus a six-month option for extension under Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.217-8. The work may be performed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, other government-owned facilities, or at contractor-owned facilities, according to the draft statement.

Responses to the RFI are due by June 16.

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“With JWCC coming on board, it’s not just an infrastructure as a service contract vehicle. All of the SaaS offerings that these major vendors have, they’re going to bring them to the table as they build these custom-built clouds for us. The AI that Google has is going to be there. Others are delving into it. Oracle, AWS, Microsoft. Expect that it will be there,” David McKeown, acting principal deputy chief information officer and senior information security officer at the Pentagon, said Wednesday at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference.

JWCC, awarded in December of 2022, was the DOD’s highly anticipated enterprise cloud effort that replaced the maligned Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were all awarded under the contract and will each compete for task orders.

Tech companies have been heavy investing in artificial intelligence capabilities. Google and Microsoft have unveiled chatbots using generative AI, which can provide users with texts, images and even carry on conversations based on prompts.

McKeown warned that data must be made available in all four vendors’ environments to facilitate the employment of AI analytics.

“As we move forward with our Joint Warfighting Cloud Computing contracts and we established large data repositories in these different cloud vendors’ environments, we can’t afford to duplicate that data. We’ve got to figure out a way to make that data available to all four of those clouds and searchable to all four of those clouds so that we can run the AI analytics over that,” he said. “We’re working on that and I think there’s some evolving solutions there.”

After taking advantage of the artificial intelligence capabilities that organizations have to offer, the next step, McKeown said, is to determine what problems they want to “turbocharge” solutions for by applying AI to them.

“We’ve got to structure our efforts in the future on very well-defined problems that we want to solve and then bring AI to the fight to solve that problem,” he added.

While artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for the DOD, on the flip side, McKeown warned of concerns of potential adversary uses of the technology.

“The adversary having this is a big concern. What are they going to do to use that to figure out how to penetrate our information systems and steal our data?” he said. “AI is pretty scary in the capabilities that it has. It can be very beneficial, as we’ve discussed, but we need to also take a vantage point of our adversaries and figure out how they’re going to use it against us and start to defend against that.”

Earlier at the conference, Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, warned of how revolutionary these capabilities can be in the wrong hands.

“Generative AI, I would offer, is probably one of the most disruptive technologies and initiatives in a very long, long time,” he said on Tuesday. “Those who harness that [and] that can understand how to best leverage it … are going to be the ones that have the high ground.”

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Zero trust is a concept that essentially assumes networks are already compromised and requires organizations to validate users, devices and data continuously. The DOD released its zero-trust strategy in October, which outlines three courses of action: institute zero-trust modernization improvements on the existing network, engage in zero-trust commercial clouds, or engage in a zero-trust privately designed cloud.  

It also defines a target level and advanced level of zero trust. The target level is the minimum set of capability outcomes to secure and protect data and requires the delivery of 91 activities. Advanced level requires a total of 152 activities.

The Pentagon plans to lean on Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle — all of which were recently awarded the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract worth up to $9 billion — to test if achieving zero trust to the “target level” in the cloud is possible, according to an official overseeing the effort.

When the DOD was looking at what commercial clouds exist, the zero-trust portfolio management office decided to ask the four cloud service providers — which will be competing for JWCC task orders — if they could implement zero trust at the target level within their cloud infrastructures, according to Randy Resnick, who leads that office.

“We got four different answers, because every infrastructure is made up of different capabilities in each one of those companies,” he said during a webinar Thursday hosted by Billington Cybersecurity. “To our satisfaction, at least on paper, they said to us that all of them could meet target-level zero trust and that many of them could approach almost the entirety, if not the entirety, of full zero trust, which we’re calling ‘advanced.’”

Now, the plan is to put those providers to the test later this year to see if they can actually do it.

“In the spring and summer, perhaps fall, depending on whether or not we have to go back for round two, we’re intending on testing all four of those CSPs … with their zero trust overlays for what they believe they’re telling us they could do at the target level,” he said.

National Security Agency red teams will attack the cloud infrastructure, allowing the DOD to determine if they can get in and exploit the data.

“That’s going to give us a really good feel on whether or not the zero-trust overlays are implemented correctly in any one, two, three or four of those [cloud service providers]. And that’ll give us a way forward for recommending to the DOD whether or not we could do zero trust in the cloud,” Resnick said. “If we speed ahead and we come to the conclusion that, in fact, it can be done, it would be absolutely revolutionary, because this means now that we can basically spin off a zero-trust cloud in a future DOD instantiation and that would already be built in with zero trust as part of its foundation.”

Resnick noted that this approach reduces risk, cost and simplifies moving to a zero-trust approach.

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On Wednesday, the Pentagon awarded its highly anticipated enterprise cloud contracts to Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

The task order process can begin within 15 days of the JWCC contract award, Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, which is managing JWCC, told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday.

Each vendor that has been tapped to participate in the $9 billion program is only guaranteed $100,000, and they will have to compete for each task order, he noted.

“We’ve been working really hard to be innovative in our task order competition process,” DISA Hosting and Compute Center Director Sharon Woods told reporters.

“There will be government evaluation teams like you would experience with any task order competition process. Where we do have some automation is not in the competitions themselves, but rather the building of the acquisition process … as mission partners put together the different pieces of their packages — and that is what is provided to the contractors to compete,” she said.

The competition process itself will use evaluation teams and include “all the subjectivity and all of the critical consideration that you would expect with a competition,” Woods said. But “we’re hoping task order competition process can be counted in weeks or maybe a few months. But we need to work through the specifics, and we’ll learn as we go.”

Defense Department CIO John Sherman told reporters that the enterprise cloud capability will be essential for enabling Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the Chief Digital and AI Officer’s key initiatives, among others.

While awarding contracts to all four of the vendors invited to bid on JWCC may stave off the kind of wholesale bid protest that bedeviled the JEDI program, contractors in some cases can protest the task order awards, which could potentially slow down the initiative.

“Under the acquisition rules [for] the task orders, there’s a $10 million threshold and a $25 million threshold on protests. So it’s really dependent on how large the task order is,” Woods said.

Sherman declined to say when the DOD will begin issuing task orders.

“We’re working with the different components of stakeholders to get the landing pattern here on that. So we’ve got to get this cranking. We want to get the contract in place, all the wickets with that. And then get through that 15 days and start working. But … there’s a ton of interest in this. I just can’t tell you who’s first in the door. But Ms. Woods has been working this diligently with all the different potential first customers here. So we should have more to talk about on that after the new year,” Sherman told DefenseScoop.

“It all depends on the mission partners. So we have an ongoing engagement strategy with all of our mission partners identifying where there’s potential options, but it will all be based on when those mission partners say, ‘We are ready,’” Skinner told DefenseScoop.

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In just two weeks after striking a deal with Google in October to provision its Workspace platform for business, productivity and collaboration tools like email and chat, the service has brought 160,000 users online, according to Army CIO Raj Iyer and Google officials.

By the middle of 2023, the Army plans to have 250,000 users on the platform, Iyer said Tuesday at the Google Government Summit in Washington.

“What we’ve seen since [kicking off the Google Workspace contract] is … our ability to rapidly implement the solution,” Iyer said. “We have 160,000 users now turned on, and we were able to do that migration in two weeks. Every new soldier that’s coming into the Army today now is provisioned automatically with a Gmail and Google Workspace account. And we’ve seen some tremendous, you know, anecdotes and positive feedback from soldiers to the process.”

The Army’s move to Google Workspace came as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic when reservists and members of the National Guard struggled to access their email because they couldn’t visit an armory or reserve center during lockdown. Similarly, the Army wasn’t doing enough to provide junior enlisted soldiers with email and collaboration services.

“These were folks that were coming into the Army, 18 to 20-year-olds. And what we did was we gave them access to an email … but we told them that the only way you could access that email was through government-furnished equipment on a government network that they needed to get access to,” Iyer said. “Well, guess what: We never gave them government-furnished equipment. So there was no laptop we could afford to give every soldier that was coming into the Army. And in times of COVID, it was exceedingly hard for them to get access to a place where they can go to go check their email.”

It was clear, Iyer said, that the Army needed to move from the Department of Defense’s sunsetting Defense Enterprise Email to a more modern solution to better serve these “digital natives.”

Adopting a more modern suite of collaboration tools is not only an operational imperative but a strategic one for the Army, its CIO said, connecting it back to the ability to recruit young people to join the force.

“It was very clear to us that we needed a solution that we were able to implement rapidly. Because you know, if we missed the opportunity to actually get something in their hands, it would actually, quite frankly, have an impact on Army recruiting,” Iyer said. “And quite frankly, we saw that if you look at the recent stories about the Army not meeting our recruiting goals, my hypothesis is one of the reasons why is we’re not giving them the best technology, you know, to help them all the way through the recruiting process and as they come into the Army.”

Google Workspace isn’t the only platform the Army uses for email and collaboration. In that regard, this contract is about resilience and fostering healthy competition for the Army’s business, Iyer said, noting that the force has more than a million users with Microsoft Office 365 credentials.

“We were not looking at replacing an existing solution,” he said. “It was really how do we augment that with other cloud-based solutions to serve, you know, the unmet needs of our soldiers. And quite frankly, at the end of the day, some competition is not a bad thing when it comes to a value proposition and best value to the taxpayer.”

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But as that marketplace has matured, federal agencies have increasingly turned to multicloud arrangements, looking to take advantage of offerings from multiple providers rather than locking themselves into the products of a single vendor.

Recognizing this appetite for more choice in the federal cloud marketplace, Google recently spun off its public sector-focused business line from Google Cloud to launch an independent division focused purely on federal, state and local governments and the education sector that can serve as an alternative, multicloud-friendly provider.

Karen Dahut, a federal technology industry veteran who spent a large part of her recent career leading Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense business, was named the first CEO of Google Public Sector in September.

Now, just more than two weeks into the job, Dahut spoke with FedScoop in an exclusive interview about her vision for delivering more of that choice into the federal marketplace and how Google hopes to inject the innovative DNA it’s known for in the commercial world into the federal government.

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

FedScoop: You’ve been in the CEO role now for roughly two weeks. How are you settling in with Google?

Karen Dahut: I will tell you that Google is such an American, iconic brand that the privilege of being able to take the great work that they’ve done for consumers, for commercial entities, for citizens, and apply that at a global level for federal government, state and local governments, educational institutions, is just, honestly, the privilege of a lifetime. You know, the last 20 years, I’ve been with Booz Allen, and I held a lot of different roles there. And there were two things that became very apparent to me in my 30-plus years in this industry. The first is that the advancements in technology have really demanded a different approach in government. And what I mean by that is, most government leaders find that their data is held captive in these very large, vertically integrated, monolithic systems. And it has less utility to them because they can’t integrate it at a more substantial level. The second thing is that most of our leaders in government, either they do have the experience of working with the ease of use of Google products and solutions or their kids have. And they’re demanding that same ease of use. And so when I thought about this role at [Google Public Sector], I thought, wow, it’s the perfect opportunity to really bring the power and magic of Google engineering into the federal government, because they’re ready for that transformation, and to really help them drive those digital transformations.

FS: You’re very early into your tenure as CEO, but what is your vision for this new organization? What’s the biggest thing you want to achieve as this organization is essentially getting off the ground and up-and-running?

KD: Well, it’s a great question. And I’ve given that a lot of thought, obviously. I mean, yes, I just started, but I had been thinking about this for a while. First things first, Google Cloud, and all of the tools that they have available on Google Cloud … it’s just a brilliant platform, right? It is scaled at planet-level scale. It has remarkable tools that it can leverage: Google Earth, Google Maps, these tools that we have become very accustomed to using. So the first principle of strategy is how do you bring not just cloud, but all of those additional incredibly accessible tools to significant federal, state, local challenges. The state of West Virginia is a good example. They switched from a Microsoft product to Google Workspace … primarily to enhance collaboration, because Workspace is truly a collaborative tool born in the cloud, native to the cloud, and it’s less expensive. They saved $11.5 million by making that switch. Another great example is that the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] worked with Google to bring in Google Analytics and Google Cloud to help understand the potential impacts of climate change and predict those changes. So I share those examples with you because I think the opportunity for Google Public Sector is to listen to our clients, provide and enhance the choices they have available to them, and solution in partnership with them. Because all of these products that I’m talking about are already scaled tools accessible to the world. And our opportunity is to tailor them for specific use cases for our public sector clients.

FS: It’s no secret that the cloud market in the federal government is very competitive. How do you look to differentiate yourself from those companies that have come to dominate the federal cloud space?

KD: Yeah, it’s a reasonable question. And one, I suspect that I’m going to answer a lot. It’s certainly not a surprise to me or not unknown to me that we were a little bit late to the cloud game in government. And I think what we really want to focus on is, first of all, the government really wants choice. They don’t want to be emboldened to a single provider. So that’s important to understand. We also believe in the power of choice and the power of multicloud. Most government organizations are going to choose different clouds for different applications. We want to be one of those that they consider — we want to provide that choice. And in fact, our Anthos tool and solution really allows governments to switch workloads between different clouds, so you’re not wedded to a single cloud. And that is going to be our approach: to understand that government wants choice. We’re one of those providers, we believe we have some very unique capabilities, to provide them that choice, and then solution with them.

FS: You’ve spent much of your career focused on the defense space. How do you plan to use that experience as a guide in this new role, particularly as the Department of Defense has place great focus on moving to the cloud, namely though the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract and others?

KD: I am super proud to be a Navy veteran and having served. I follow in the footsteps of my father who served for 42 years, and my sister who served, so super proud of that service. I think that for defense specifically, there is so much opportunity to bring the power of data analytics and AI to bear on their big challenges like JADC2, Joint All Domain Command and Control. That is a data challenge. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to many people across the department and in the services and they are looking for ways to integrate that data that gives them better perspective and insight into the world and the threats that they face. And I truly believe that using Google’s products and capabilities, whether it’s Cloud, Maps, Earth, or all of those great capabilities in combination to solve for some of the challenges — not just in defense, but in civil agencies and the like — is super exciting. And I really have a fervent belief that once we can unlock the power of the cloud and the power of data and AI from that cloud, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do to support government.

FS: Are there other public sector-specific mission sets or problem sets that come to mind that Google’s solutions could be a good fit for?

KD: I think it’s always instructive to go back to some of the work that we’re doing in commercial because there are direct applications In government. So for example, Ford Motor Co. hired us to use data and AI to predict maintenance. You have probably heard this is a significant issue across the military services — how do they maintain their fleet or their tanks or whatever it may be … We believe we have a solution that can help them easily do that. One of the things that [Google Cloud CEO] Thomas [Kurian] said to me as I was assuming this role is: ‘There is a world of opportunity. Our challenge is going to be to focus in on the top areas where we believe we can, with rapidity, really help government.’ And so I think that’s what I’m going to be focused in on: What are the best use cases that we can solution with clients to bring to bear on their challenges?

FS: With security such a major focus in the federal government right now, particularly with zero trust, how does Google Public Sector plan to make that a key element of its work with agencies?

KD: Google pioneered the idea of zero trust and built the first-ever zero-trust architecture. So we are a cloud provider that has security built in from the outset. And that’s really important. We know that our government clients, and the degree of sensitivity of the data that is housed in that cloud, absolutely has to have assurances around security. And so we fundamentally understand that and have always built that into our products. The second thing that’s really exciting is the acquisition of Mandiant. You know, Kevin Mandia, is a force for good. He built an amazing company that is really based upon understanding the threat landscape, providing true, no-kidding incident response capabilities, has built an incredible threat landscape library and is building a security-as-a-service platform within Google Cloud’s architecture. So the combination of all of those components of security will beautifully serve, I think, all aspects of government, but more importantly, ensure citizens that may be using that cloud or enterprises within government that are using that cloud, that their data, their information is secure.

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