The long and winding road to Amazon’s $2 billion ‘top secret cloud’ contract
Amazon Web Services' $2 billion agreement to build high-security data centres for defence and intelligence agencies comes after a long journey in Australia, featuring many twists and turns.
The year 2022 turned out to be pivotal for Amazon Australia.
That was the year when, after around 18 months of negotiations, Microsoft pulled out of building high-security data centres for the Office of National Intelligence (ONI). At the same time, Amazon's ties with the government grew closer. Amazon Web Services (AWS) renewed a deal to provide cloud services to the entire public sector, worth $174 million.
It was also in 2022 that AWS began negotiating on its own data-centre deal with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). That created a path to Thursday, when the company announced its biggest ever contract with the Australian government.
AWS will partner with the ASD to build data centres certified with the highest level of security, dubbed Top Secret Cloud. AWS will be paid “at least $2 billion” over the next decade for its efforts.
That Australia will have its own Top Secret-graded data centres means allies will in theory be less squeamish about sharing sensitive intelligence with Australian agencies. It will also mean defence and intelligence agencies will have a self-contained environment, sealed off from the rest of the internet, to build and deploy artificial intelligence.
