Amazon has again claimed that US president Donald Trump “unfairly” intervened to prevent the company from getting a $10bn defence contract.
The tech giant’s founder owns The Washington Post, which has been very critical of Mr Trump.
“It’s fairly obvious that it wasn’t adjudicated fairly,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
“The conclusion is that there was a lot of political interference.”
Amazon is currently suing the US government over having been wrongly excluded from consideration for the so-called ‘Jedi’ cloud defence contract, which was awarded to Microsoft.
“You have a sitting president who’s willing to share openly his disdain for a company,” said Mr Jassy.
“It makes it really difficult for government agencies, including the DOD [Department of Defence] to make decisions without fear of reprisal. And I think it’s really risky for the country and for democracy.
“When we talk about national security of the country and modernising technology platforms, the foundation on which all of the applications that are used to defend our country, you have to ensure that those decisions are made truly objectively.”
Mr Jassy was talking to journalists on the fringe of the company’s annual Amazon Web Services Re:Invent conference, attended by 65,000 IT professionals.
Earlier, Amazon Web Services’ managing director for Europe, Andy Isherwood, told Independent.ie that he could not comment on the company’s plans to expand its operation in Ireland, where it employs 2,500 people.
The web giant reportedly signed a lease on a new Dublin office, which could take its staff presence to 4,000 in the next three years.
However, Mr Jassy said that the growth of the company’s business made expansion foreseeable.
“As we continue to grow the business, our teams are growing too,” he told Independent.ie.
“So by the very nature of growing, you’re probably going to expand from a premises point of view.”
Mr Jassy said that there is no apparent slowdown in the company’s business.
“The growth continues to be astonishing,” he said.
“There’s an insatiable appetite from startups to big enterprises. But the percentage of the market that we’re addressing is only maybe three percent.”
Mr Jassy also said that Amazon’s presence in Ireland was not affected to current international tension over tax reform.
“No,” he said.
“We think long term about the company and about the business.
“We don’t make short term decisions. If you think what we’re doing around power and renewable energies, these are long term big investments and Ireland is a pretty good place to do that.
“When you think about it, you can imagine the sort of capital investment involved. We don’t change these decisions overnight.”
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