By Debbie Gregory

Microsoft has strongly defended its work with the U.S. military, in response to a group identifying itself as “Employees of Microsoft” who want the tech giant to forego bids on the Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud procurement.

Microsoft President Brad Smith has responded, saying that Microsoft is proud of its long history of technology contracts with the Department of Defense, and will continue working to make sure the military has “access to the nation’s best technology, including from Microsoft.”

Smith added that Microsoft employees who want to switch teams can apply for other open jobs within the company, according to a blog article he wrote.

“We want the people of this country, and especially the people who serve this country, to know that we at Microsoft have their back,” he wrote. “They will have access to the best technology that we create.”

Microsoft also pledged to “engage as a company in the public dialogue” with the Defense Department and policymakers about ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence, including autonomous weapons. By working with the military and government, Microsoft can be more directly involved in these ethics conversations, Smith wrote.

The opposition from the Microsoft employee group is just the latest episode in an ongoing ethical crisis within the U.S. technology industry.

Earlier this year, Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to Project Maven cost the company dozens of employees, who resigned in mass protest.

Additionally, Microsoft faced internal furor last spring and early summer over their contractual connections to ICE, as the agency was embroiled in the controversial separation and detainment of migrant children at the border.

Amazon has also faced criticism from employees and the American Civil Liberties Union over the marketing of its facial-recognition software, Rekognition, to law enforcement agencies.

The concept of lethal Artificial Intelligence is just one area where hundreds of tech workers are trying to influence corporate behavior and ethics by signing a pledge not to work on lethal autonomous weapons.

By Debbie Gregory.

Congress was generous when it passed a spending bill that gave the military at minimum an additional $61 billion, boosting its overall budget to $700 billion this year.

For even the most serious of shopaholics, spending upwards of $300 billion in the final quarter of fiscal 2018 would be challenging. But spend it government agencies will, rather than giving the money back to the Treasury Department.

The spending spree must be completed by September 30th.  Through August, defense and civilian agencies obligated some $300 billion in contracts. But to spend all the money appropriated to them by Congress, they may have to obligate well over $200 billion more.

Predicting how much the government will spend on contracts is more or less an estimation, but no agency wants to have to return unused funds.

“As big as this year’s defense budget looks, it’s not enough to fix the problems,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, who heads the House Armed Services Committee. “The first job of the federal government is to defend the country.”

More than 80 percent of the decision-makers surveyed by Government Business Council said they expected to spend their remaining budget dollars on existing contract vehicles.

“There’s one thing the Department of Defense is good at — it’s spending money quickly,” said Todd Harrison, who tracks military spending at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The most common near-term purchases reported by the surveyed decision-makers were professional services (34 percent), human capital products (29 percent), office management products (28 percent) and information technology (26 percent).

“We’re going to have to make a decision as a nation about our overall defense strategy and the role of our military,” said Harrison. “If you want to maintain the same level of involvement in the world, then you’re going to need to fund a larger military.