By Mike Murphy, Market Watch–
While some tech companies are backing away from working with the Pentagon, Jeff Bezos says Amazon.com Inc. won’t be one of them.
“If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble.”
Speaking in San Francisco at an event for Wired’s 25th anniversary Monday, Amazon’s chief executive said he was baffled that some companies have cut Pentagon ties after employee dissent.
“We are going to continue to support the DoD, and I think we should,” said Bezos. “One of the jobs of senior leadership is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular.”
Amazon AMZN, +2.27% has faced internal criticism for some of its work with the U.S. government, including facial recognition software that critics fear could be misused. Fellow tech giant Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +2.45% GOOG, +2.28% last week withdrew from the bidding process for a lucrative cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon — which Amazon is still the running for — over concerns that it would clash with the company’s principles. Microsoft Corp.MSFT, +2.78% employees have also urged their company not to bid for military contracts, citing ethical reasons. And over the summer, Alphabet’s Google said it would not renew a Pentagon contract for artificial intelligence that could be used for lethal purposes, after employees raised concerns.
But Bezos said tech companies cannot walk away from the government over political differences. “I know everybody’s conflicted about the current politics in this country,” he said. “This is a great country and it needs to be defended.”
Bezos’s private space company, Blue Origin, recently won a major government contract to supply rockets for Pentagon satellite launches.
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