| AMAZON POISED TO WIN BIG CONTRACT DESPITE TRUMP FIGHT: The Trump administration is considering whether to award Amazon a multibillion-dollar defense contract even as President Trump hammers the company. Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly derided Amazon on Twitter, ramping up his feud with the e-commerce giant and in particular its owner, Jeff Bezos. The company’s stock has tumbled as a result. "I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!" Trump tweeted last week. But even as the president hits Amazon, federal defense officials are seen as likely to award the company a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract early next month. The Department of Defense (DOD) is finalizing the details of the contract during a public comment period, but has signaled that it will ask a single source to develop a new department-wide cloud computing system. The tech industry has been closely watching the bidding process, with Amazon's rivals expressing concerns that the company has an unfair advantage. The Pentagon says otherwise: "The DoD remains committed to a transparent process. No companies were pre-selected. We have no favorites, and we want the best solution for the department," Navy Commander Patrick Evans, a Pentagon spokesman told The Hill via email on Wednesday. Amazon’s position: "[The Pentagon] will select the provider that best meets their needs for the warfighter. Legacy providers that claim otherwise are focused on protecting their own bottom line and not advancing the mission of DOD,” an Amazon Web Services (AWS) spokeswoman told The Hill in an email last month. What the White House is saying: “The president is not involved in the process. The DOD runs a competitive bidding process,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday. What’s next: The Department of Defense will release a final version of its draft proposal in May, after reviewing industry comments, which have been coming in since a draft of the proposal was released in March. Please send your tips, comments and Tiger Woods hype montages to Ali Breland (abreland@thehill.com) and Harper Neidig (hneidig@thehill.com) and follow us on Twitter: @alibreland and @hneidig. We're also on Signal and WhatsApp. Email or DM us for our numbers.
TRUMP LASHES OUT AT AMAZON, PROMISES CRACKDOWN ON IP THEFT: The president killed a few birds with one stone this morning when he blasted both Amazon and the Washington Post and promised his tariffs would punish China for stealing tech secrets, all in one tweet.
“The Fake News Washington Post, Amazon’s ‘chief lobbyist,’ has another (of many) phony headlines, ‘Trump Defiant As China Adds Trade Penalties.’ WRONG!” the president tweeted. “Should read, ‘Trump Defiant as U.S. Adds Trade Penalties, Will End Barriers And Massive I.P. Theft.’ Typically bad reporting!” Fears over a trade war have prompted volatility in U.S. markets as the White House is scrambling to defend its escalation with China. SENATORS GET A CRACK AT ZUCKERBERG: Next week, the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees will grill Mark Zuckerberg in a rare joint hearing, the panels announced Wednesday night. The hearing will come on April 10, a day before the Facebook CEO is slated to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Lawmakers are gearing up to take him to task over the company’s data practices and its response to Cambridge Analytica improperly obtaining information on millions of Facebook users. The latest hearing was announced in the wake of Facebook’s bombshell that 87 million users had been affected by the Cambridge scandal, updating the previous estimate of 50 million. That announcement prompted a fresh wave of outrage. “There are a lot of questions that Mark Zuckerberg needs to answer and I intend to ask what he is doing to protect the privacy of Americans and how he plans to address the significant breaches in security and trust that have occurred over the last year,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said in a statement. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) added, “Mark Zuckerberg must explain what recourse will be provided to users who have already been subjected to abusive and intrusive invasions of their privacy and how Facebook's new policies will give the American public meaningful control over their sensitive information.” Must watch TV: NBC will air a preview of its interview with COO Sheryl Sandburg tonight during the 8 p.m. hour. The full interview will be broadcast during Friday morning’s “Today Show.” LONGREAD OF THE DAY: Facebook has received tremendous amounts of criticism and scrutiny over the past several weeks following the Cambridge Analytica controversy. The big question though is what does the company does moving forward. Julia Angwin, who has written about Facebook’s flaws before for ProPublica, has answers. In a story for The Atlantic, she outlines different actions the government could take to address lawmaker complaints about the company. MICROSOFT'S NEW RANSOMWARE PROTECTIONS: Microsoft will offer new safeguards to its Office 365 users to help protect them against ransomware and recover lost files. From our colleague Morgan Chalfant: The company is now offering the “File Restore” feature to all OneDrive cloud storage users, which allows individuals to restore their entire OneDrive to a previous point within the last 30 days. This tool is already available for those who use OneDrive for Business and will be expanded to personal users. “You can use this feature to recover from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or another catastrophic event,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for Microsoft Office. VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY FIGHTS FOR NET NEUTRALITY: The Entertainment Software Association has asked to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Democratic attorneys general seeking to halt the repeal of the FCC’s net neutrality rules. "Absent these protections, ESA and its member companies will have no effective legal recourse against broadband provider conduct that impairs consumers’ online video game experiences," the trade group said in its court filing. Background: A coalition of 22 attorneys general, led by New York AG Eric Schneiderman, filed their lawsuit in February. The case will be heard in DC federal court. KREMLIN CALLS FACEBOOK REMOVAL OF RUSSIAN ACCOUNTS A HOSTILE MOVE: A spokesman for Vladimir Putin blasted Facebook over its crackdown on the Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm” believed to have orchestrated a disinformation campaign during the 2016 election. “Yes it is,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said to a reporter when asked if the decision was hostile. “We are of course following this and we regret it.” Facebook announced earlier this week that it had purged 200 accounts linked to the organization. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Rob Atkinson and New America’s Michael Lind released a new book contending that big corporations are actually better than small businesses. Democratic senators are pressing the FCC on stringrays — devices law enforcement have been using to collect metadata from cell phones. Facebook asked hospitals to share patient data The Guardian: Twitter bans 270,000 new accounts for promoting terrorism. WSJ: South Korea detains crypto executives over embezzlement allegations Op-ed: From Africa to the United States, the revolution begins online | 
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