Undercover Boss: The Growing Power of Jeff Bezos

When many think of Amazon, they think of an online store where they can buy almost anything imaginable from food to electronics, books, music and maybe even own a Kindle eBook reader as well.

Even though Amazon's CEO and founder Jeff Bezos does not shy away from the public eye, he isn't really the face of Amazon that you think of when you think of the company. Somehow he manages to be in public but remains unseen.

Ask anyone you know if they know who Jeff Bezos is or what he looks like, many will probably not be able to tell you. If you work in tech or somewhere like Seattle, you might be familiar with him.

While the recent social media platform hate speech censorship debacle is in full swing, if you look elsewhere you will see a company who has been extending its reach into government over the last few years, a company called Amazon.

When you think of a tech company with influence and power, you probably think of Apple, Facebook or Google. And arguably those are influential large tech companies, but surprisingly not many people seem to realise that Amazon is constantly growing and is on course to be bigger and more influential than Apple, Facebook and Google put together.

Like a shadowy puppet figure, Jeff Bezos has been cosying up to lobbyists and building up a network of high-profile Washington DC politicians.

In fact, some are saying that Jeff Bezos has more power in Washington DC than President Donald Trump himself. Yet, many have never heard of this man or just naively assumed he sells goods on an online marketplace.

Bezos owns more than an e-commerce platform, other companies under the Amazon empire include:

• Whole Foods
• Zappos
• Twitch
• Kiva Systems (acquired and rebranded Amazon Robotics)
• Souq.com
• Quidsi
• Elemental Tech
• Annapurna Labs
• Audible
• Alexa
• Goodreads
• Woot
• Accept.com
• IMDB

Then you have the numerous companies that Bezos has invested into via his venture capital investments called Bezos Expeditions

• Lookout
• Juno Therapeutics
• GRAIL
• Workday
• Rethink Robotics
• General Fusion

Through a separate private company owned by Bezos he also owns Nash Holdings which bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. The Washington Post has posted numerous stories criticising Donald Trump and has had accusations of bias levelled at it (don't bite the hand that feeds you, Jeff).

But this isn't about Bezos forays into robotics, space, healthcare, mainstream media or furthering his e-commerce reach, it's about the most profitable aspect of Amazon: Amazon Web Services.

Follow The Money... Amazon Web Services

To put the sheer size and profitability of AWS into perspective, back in April 2018 Amazon released its earnings and a mammoth 49 percent revenue increase in its first quarter. It reported sales of $5.44 billion and AWS contributes 11 percent of Amazon's total revenue for the period, up 8.5 from the previous quarter.

According to CNBC:

AWS produced $1.4 billion in operating income in the first quarter. That accounted for 73 percent of Amazon's $1.93 billion in operating income.

Even if you're not in I.T or tech, all you need to know is AWS essentially underpins a lot of the tech ecosystem. Many companies use AWS to host their web applications and data through its trove of apis and flexible cloud computing services.

A few years ago Amazon made moves into the lucrative military and defence sector when it scored itself a CIA contract in 2014 worth $600 million. This led to Amazon creating a defence offering specifically for the military and national security sector that it announced in 2017.

Taken from the landing page for Amazon Defense, it says:

Adoption of cloud computing is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage. Our nation’s warfighters deserve the most innovative and secure solutions at the tactical edge – whether on land, in air, or at sea. The AWS Cloud provides secure, scalable, and cost-efficient solutions that help agencies meet mandates, drive efficiencies, increase innovation, and secure mission-critical workloads across the U.S. Department of Defense.

When you visit Amazon's contract centre where it lists all of its contracts, under the federal section we can see the kind of reach that Amazon has when it comes to numerous federal agencies.

But the real story is a lucrative $10 billion Pentagon contract for a single provider to provide the Pentagon with cloud services for storing private, public and various level classified materials in the cloud.

On July 26, 2018, the Defense Department issued a proposal called JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure), one of the biggest federal contracts in recent history. It's a very big contract.

But some feathers have been ruffled with insiders familiar with the deal alleging that the contract has been written in such a way that only one cloud provider could possibly fulfil the requirements listed in it: Amazon.

The details are all laid bare in an article published in Vanity Fair (of all places). Some of the interesting tidbits in the article have been quoted below for brevity.

Though there has long been talk about the Defense Department joining the cloud, the current call for bids was put together only after Defense Secretary James Mattis hired a D.C. lobbyist who had previously consulted for Amazon.

The lobbyist, Sally Donnelly, served as a top advisor to Mattis while the details of JEDI were being hammered out. During her tenure, Mattis flew to Seattle to tour Amazon’s headquarters and meet with Jeff Bezos. Then, as the cloud-computing contract was being finalized, Donnelly’s former lobbying firm, SBD Advisors, was bought by an investment fund with ties to Amazon’s cloud-computing unit.

It's ironic that the media keeps on going on about Trump and Russian collusion, and yet here we have a very obvious and clear case of collusion and special interests lobbying for a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon, it's insane.

The article then goes on to mention Jeff Bezos influential Washington connections:

But whether or not any legal or ethical boundaries were crossed, Amazon’s high-ranking connections in the Pentagon underscore how Jeff Bezos continues to wield influence in Washington, even as the president himself rails against the online goliath.

It then continues on with the following:

It also raises a larger question: How do you drain a swamp when the alligators are bigger than ever? “When you have that kind of access during a $10 billion procurement, that compromises the integrity of the procurement,” says John Weiler, an industry expert who runs a trade group that includes many leading IT firms. “Amazon was basically able to write the playbook.”

Just when you think it cannot get even crazier, the article then says:

Amazon insists that Bezos and Mattis did not discuss the cloud bid during the visit. But the defence secretary reportedly returned from the visit convinced that the Pentagon needed to turn its data over to a commercial cloud provider. A month after Mattis met with Bezos, on September 13, 2017, the Pentagon put out a memo citing the defence secretary’s visit to Seattle, which it hailed as an “epicenter of innovation.” The memo then called for a cloud bid that would cover all of the Pentagon’s data for its 2.3 million employees and service members. Amazon, it appeared, was suddenly in prime position to land a $10 billion defense contract.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that Mattis visits Jeff Bezos and then a couple of days later a guy who probably can't even turn on his computer without help suddenly has an epiphany that the Pentagon needs to give its data to a commercial cloud provider.

Perhaps the last big takeaway you would be surprised to learn is about the Amazon amendment:

If you think the JEDI contract is big, consider this: Last year, working for Bezos, Rung helped pass the so-called Amazon amendment, a provision buried in a defense authorization bill that will establish Amazon as the go-to portal for every online purchase the government makes—some $53 billion every year.

From the outset something illegal has definitely taken place here, the cards are stacked in Amazon's favour. You might be forgiven for thinking nothing will come of it, well nine other tech companies (rivals to Amazon and one another) have all banded together and fought the unfair tendering process.

And we are not talking about small companies, the companies that are collectively working together to express concern over the unfair process are; Oracle, SAP America, General Dynamics's CSRA unit, Red Hat, VMware, Microsoft, IBM, Dell Technologies, and Hewlett Packard.

While Amazon might be the market leader in cloud services, it isn't the only one. However given their massive government influence and extensive network of lobbyists and politicians, Amazon has become so entrenched that it's basically The Federal Reserve 2.0.

A Monopoly In Plain Sight

What people don't realise is that Amazon has been slowly building up a monolithic empire, a monopoly never before seen in history, only rivalled by The Federal Reserve. Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar empire, a sentiment echoed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.

Even though Bezos a staunch Republican and notably his lobbyist mouthpiece The Washington Post ran sixteen smear pieces against Bernie Sanders in a 16 hour period, has copped criticism from president Donald Trump going back to 2016.

Trump once voiced concerns over tax avoidance and antitrust/monopoly behaviour:

What he’s got is a monopoly, and he wants to make sure I don’t get in

Business Insider has a great article detailing the concerns that Trump had about Bezos. It is almost as if Donald Trump is aware of the extent of Bezos' reach and influence in Washington DC.

Private Company With Government Secrets

It is all but certain that Amazon wins this Pentagon contract worth $10 billion. And that just opens up a whole bunch of new potential issues being a single provider and means of storage for a trove of intelligence and protected information.

We are talking about the same company who kicked WikiLeaks off of its AWS platform in 2010 and then shortly thereafter won a government contract with the CIA.

But the real concern here is that Jeff Bezos with increasingly growing influence and power will be getting his hands on top-secret information from the US government and it'll be all stored on a single service.

While I am sure Amazon will have to comply with the governments strict compliance criteria and there will be more attention being placed on security after the Snowden leaks, we are talking about all US government intelligence information being stored with a single provider, any security expert will tell you a single source of information makes for a great attack vector.

It actually reminds me of a horrible movie I saw called The Circle. The premise is a large-scale social network starts getting involved with the government and obtaining information on everyone. It uses this data to manipulate political figures and extend its reach.

Jeff Bezos: Worse than Soros and the Rothschilds

Staples of the conspiracy world, George Soros and the Rothschilds family are often cited as being behind many pieces of legislation and agenda based government moves, Jeff Bezos is going to make these guys look like amateurs when he is done.

If you want to know who the "deep state" really is, it is people like Jeff Bezos. In-fact, when you dig into Bezos you realise that nobody has the reach and influence that he has in tech circles. Mark Zuckerberg might have a popular social platform, Bezos has the funds, influence and government contracts.

Can we trust a man who laughs like a crazy supervillain? Who knows. But it looks like we have no choice, Jeff Bezos is now a part of the government and will continue to extend his reach as he gets the taste for power, will it corrupt him or is he already corrupt?

You can see why Jeff Bezos is always laughing...