US defense chief says cloud contract was fair, despite Amazon challenge

SEOUL, Nov 15 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday the Pentagon awarded Microsoft Corp an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract after a fair competition, after Amazon.com Inc announced plans to challenge it over alleged bias.

“I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly without any type of outside influence,” Esper told a news conference in Seoul.

Amazon claims that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process. President Donald Trump has long criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)