whether Amazon or Microsoft has one

of the most sensitive contracts the Pentagon has ever

handed out.

The US Department of Defense is about to give one of those two

companies $10bn over 10 years to build it a new cloud computing

network, which will handle some of its most secure data sets

and enable communication among its armed forces

around the world.

But there is a problem.

With just weeks to go until an announcement was planned,

President Trump intervened saying

that he had heard complaints about the tampering process

from some of America's great companies.

Some believe that the president is not

too happy about the prospect of the US government

handing a massive contract to Amazon whose founder, Jeff

Bezos, also owns "The Washington Post"

and has been a frequent target of the president's attacks.

Just a few days later, Mark Esper, the new Secretary of

announced he was going to conduct

another last-minute review into the process.

But it's not clear what the Secretary is actually

looking for.

Neither Amazon nor Microsoft has been contacted by the Defense

Department as part of that review, let alone

asked for any additional information.

So what is Mr Esper about up to?

The DoD says that he is undertaking

an educational exercise.

But others point out that he has been acting defense secretary

since June and is hardly likely to need

much more new information into the process.

Instead, many believe that what Mr Esper is doing

is trying to pave the way for a possible decision

to hand the contract to Amazon.

He's looking for political cover.

Whether he gets it or not is unclear,

but if that is the case I suspect

Amazon will take this as a good sign.