Stefan Mileschin

Just if you were wondering why its cloud was so big

If you ever wondered how Amazon's massive cloud computing unit got so big, it might be because it is aggressively recruiting US government officials as it pushes to make itself essential to branches such as the military and the intelligence community.

According to Politico, since 2018, Amazon Web Services has hired at least 66 former government officials with acquisition, procurement or technology adoption experience, most hired directly away from government posts and more than half of them from the Defense Department.

While that is not many when you consider AWS has tens of thousands of employees, it is pretty specific other AWS hires have come from departments including Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

That's on top of more than 600 hires of government officials across all of Amazon during the same time -- itself a mark of the company's expanding footprint in the DC region. Amazon employs more than one million people overall, after adding 500,000 new jobs last year alone.

To be fair, Amazon is probably not the only one doing this. But it does seem that tech companies are becoming more entrenched in the operations of the government itself. It is even letting politicians shout about the danger of letting them get too powerful to make them think they are still in charge.

https://fudzilla.com/news/52997-amaz...ment-officials