(Bloomberg) — A bipartisan pair of senators is reviving a bill to break the grip that tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have on the Pentagon’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence contracts.
The Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act is set to be reintroduced on Thursday by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Eric Schmitt of Missouri, according to people familiar with the matter. A version of the bill is also being introduced for the first time in the House, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public.
The goal of the legislation is to increase competition for billions of dollars worth of AI and cloud contracts currently dominated by Big Tech firms. If passed, the Department of Defense would be required to hold a competitive bidding process for deals worth $50 million or more. The bill would also direct the agency to “mitigate barriers” that make it harder for startups and nontraditional contractors to compete.
The planned legislation reflects a new balancing act for lawmakers. While many in Washington have expressed greater urgency to bolster US technological competitiveness and deploy more AI across the federal government, there are also longstanding concerns on both sides of the aisle about further entrenching the dominance of Silicon Valley’s largest companies.
“It’s a mistake to let Silicon Valley monopolize our AI and cloud computing tools because it doesn’t just stifle innovation, it increases costs and threatens our national security,” Warren said in statement.
Warren and Schmitt, who both sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, first introduced the bill in December, in the final weeks of the Biden administration, but it failed to gain traction. It’s gathered fresh momentum recently, helped by new procurement policies issued by the White House focused on building a “competitive AI marketplace.”
