AWS announced the Intelligence Community Accelerated Modernization Framework (ICAMF) at AWS Summit D.C. on June 30, committing up to $1 billion in cloud credits through October 2030 for U.S. Intelligence Community agencies to migrate classified workloads off legacy on-premises systems. The program is available to all IC agencies on the existing AWS contract, according to the AWS Public Sector Blog.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, in his first public remarks in office, confirmed the CIA will use ICAMF to overhaul its IT architecture. Ratcliffe described what he called a “tech renaissance” at the agency: acquisition timelines cut from 12 to 24 months down to under six, cyber elevated to a Mission Center, and analysts already using large language models to streamline repetitive tasks, surface hidden intelligence, and translate content that would have taken hundreds of hours manually, according to Amazon.
How ICAMF Works
The structure is straightforward: migrate qualified workloads to AWS, receive credits. The more workloads agencies move, the more they save. AWS frames the freed budget as an accelerant for deploying AI tools that help analysts work faster and surface hidden insights, according to the AWS Public Sector Blog.
ICAMF builds on the $50 billion infrastructure expansion AWS announced last fall for federal agencies.
AWS Secret Cloud for Industry Opens Classified Access to Contractors
Alongside ICAMF, AWS launched AWS Secret Cloud for Industry (ASCI), which for the first time lets cleared U.S. defense contractors run contractor-owned classified workloads directly on AWS infrastructure. Previously, cleared contractors had to build and maintain separate on-premises infrastructure for classified programs, an arrangement that was capital-intensive, rigid, and incompatible with modern AI capabilities, according to Amazon.
Northrop Grumman is the first contractor to deploy on the platform. Drew Barnes, Northrop Grumman’s VP of IT infrastructure, said the service “fundamentally changes how we develop and scale sensitive programs at speed,” according to Amazon. AWS is backing ASCI with an additional $20 million accelerator initiative in credits for defense companies.
The service holds a Provisional Authorization at Impact Level 6 from the Defense Information Systems Agency, meeting the authorization standard for Secret-classified information.
Two Billion-Dollar Bets on Government AI
The ICAMF and FDE announcements together represent $2 billion in new AWS commitments at a single conference. The timing is deliberate: AWS Summit D.C. runs June 29 through July 1, and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and UK Chief Technology Officer Sonia Patel also appeared alongside AWS VP Dave Levy during the keynote.
The intelligence community context adds an edge. The Pentagon unveiled its own Agent Network agentic AI tool for military targeting earlier this week. With ICAMF, AWS is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer underneath both civilian and defense agentic deployments, offering the compute, the credits, and now the classified clearance to run autonomous systems on the most sensitive government data.