Pentagon Authorizes Oracle Cloud for Top Secret and Special Access Program Missions

The U.S. Department of Defense granted Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) authority to operate (ATO) for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) and Special Access Program (SAP) missions on February 15, 2022, authorizing Oracle to host and process some of the Pentagon’s most highly classified data and operations. This clearance authorization represented a major expansion of Oracle’s access to the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence programs, elevating Oracle to the highest level of security clearance available for cloud computing contractors.

Special Access Programs (SAP) require security measures beyond standard Top Secret clearances, typically involving compartmentalized projects related to advanced weapons systems, covert operations, and highly sensitive intelligence activities. The DoD authorization allows Oracle to process data classified at DISA Impact Level 6 (Top Secret) through Oracle National Security Regions—physically isolated, air-gapped cloud facilities connected exclusively to classified government networks and separated from Oracle’s commercial infrastructure.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is already deployed across multiple Department of Defense entities, including the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, various defense agencies, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The February 2022 authorization expanded Oracle’s existing FedRAMP High and DoD Impact Level 5 capabilities to encompass the highest classification levels, positioning Oracle to compete for the Pentagon’s most sensitive cloud computing workloads under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.

This top-secret clearance came approximately 15 months after Oracle was awarded a position on the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) contract in November 2020, providing Oracle with comprehensive access to classified operations across both the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. The DoD authorization solidified Oracle’s position as a major contractor for the U.S. national security apparatus, with clearances spanning all classification levels from unclassified through Top Secret/SCI and Special Access Programs.

Oracle’s accumulation of top-secret clearances across the intelligence community and Defense Department raises profound concerns about the privatization of national security infrastructure. The same company founded on a CIA contract in 1977, whose chairman hosted multimillion-dollar fundraisers for Donald Trump, and which operates commercial surveillance operations tracking billions of people, now has authority to process the military’s most sensitive classified programs. This concentration of surveillance capabilities—both commercial and governmental—in a single politically-connected corporation exemplifies the merger of state and corporate power in the surveillance apparatus.