Amazon’s massive cloud-computing unit is aggressively recruiting U.S. government officials as it pushes to make itself essential to branches such as the military and the intelligence community, POLITICO reported Friday. From the report: 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. That’s a small portion of AWS’ tens of thousands of employees, but a particularly key group to its federal business. 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 D.C. region. Amazon employs more than 1 million people overall, after adding 500,000 new jobs last year alone. The hiring spree highlights how tech companies are becoming more entrenched in the operations of the government itself — and indispensable to Cabinet agencies and national security operations — even as politicians shout about the danger of letting them get too powerful.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2020 file photo, an Amazon logo appears on an Amazon delivery van in Boston. Amazon said Tuesday, June 1, 2021 that it will stop testing jobseekers for marijuana. The company, the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, is making the change as states legalize cannabis or introduce laws banning employers from testing for it. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)