Author Archive

Frank Konkel

Executive Editor, Nextgov

Frank Konkel
Frank Konkel is Nextgov’s executive editor. He writes about the intersection of government and technology. Frank began covering tech in 2013 upon moving to the Washington, D.C., area after getting his start in journalism working at local and state issues at daily newspapers in his home state of Michigan. Frank was born and raised on a dairy farm and graduated from Michigan State University.
Policy

Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Ban TikTok, Citing National Security

Bipartisan bill follows FBI warnings about Beijing's sway over the world's largest social-media platform.

Business

Pentagon Splits $9B Cloud Effort Among Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle

All four had been shortlisted for JWCC, DOD's do-over of its giant JEDI cloud contract effort.

Policy

Biden Invokes Defense Production Act to Boost Clean Energy Manufacturing

“Reducing America’s dependence on gas and oil is critical to U.S. national security,” DepSecDef Hicks said.

Threats

Iran-Linked Hackers Probing US Networks, Intel Agencies Warn

Active “cyber operations against government and commercial networks” may seek to take advantage of defenders' focus on Russia.

Threats

Biden ‘Prepared to Respond’ If Russia Cyberattacks US

The White House also announced sanctions to limit Russia’s access to cutting-edge technologies.

Threats

US Spy Chief Warns Government Is Classifying Too Much Data

As the amount of data soars, so does the burden of reviewing classified data for its eventual declassification.

Business

Amazon Offers 2nd Air-Gapped Cloud For Top-Secret Data

The new cloud's data centers are "more than 1,000 miles" away from the northern-Virginia complex that serves U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.

Policy

NSA Awards Secret Up-to-$10B Contract to Amazon

A Microsoft protest of the decision has revealed some details about the U.S. intelligence community's second multi-billion dollar cloud award of the year.

Business

Pentagon Cancels JEDI Cloud Contract

The Defense Department will opt for a new multibillion-dollar, multi-vendor contract.

Threats

The Pandemic is Pushing the Pentagon Toward Classified Telework

The risk-averse agency has cracked small-scale remote handling of secret and top-secret information. The challenge is doing it at scale.

Science & Tech

Navy's $70 Billion Financial System Now in the Cloud

Just "one database contained more than 13 terabytes of data." Amazon moved the entire system in 10 months, eight ahead of schedule.

Science & Tech

Amazon: Pentagon Is Trying to ‘Gerrymander’ Its JEDI Fix

Amazon Web Services said the Pentagon’s plan to fix the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract is not enough.

Science & Tech

Amazon Wants Trump to Testify as It Protests JEDI Cloud Award

Amazon Web Services also wants to hear from Defense Secretary Mark Esper and has asked for White House communications in its case against the Defense Department.

Science & Tech

Amazon Will File Injunction to Stop JEDI Work

The latest twist in the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud contract could halt further action.

Science & Tech

Amazon’s JEDI Protest Centers on Trump

In July, the president made highly unusual remarks about the competition for the giant cloud-computing contract.

Business

Court Clears Pentagon to Award JEDI Lawsuit

The ruling against Oracle allows the government to award the contract in August to Microsoft or Amazon Web Services.

Business

The US Government’s Historic Spending Spree Continues

Spending data from the Government Accountability Office confirmed last year’s predicted spending spree and early fiscal 2019 data suggests historical spending levels continued.

Science & Tech

IBM Files Bid Protest Against Pentagon’s JEDI Contract

IBM becomes the second company to file a pre-award bid protest against the Pentagon’s multibillion cloud contract.