Amazon and Google: How two tech giants differ over working with US Dept. of Defense
Tech giants Amazon and Google are at odds when it comes to working with the U.S. Department of Defense.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that his company will work with the U.S. military in any way that they feel it’s appropriate proclaiming that refusing to do so will put the U.S. in jeopardy.
“We are going to continue to support the DoD, and I think we should,” Bezos said during a surprise appearance at the Wired 25 conference in San Francisco on Monday. “One of the jobs of a senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular. If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the U.S. Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble.”
Google pulled out from a lucrative, multibillion dollar cloud contract with the Pentagon citing that the principles behind the government’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) doesn’t align with the search engine’s artificial intelligence codes.
“While we are working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many areas, we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Cypress Semiconductor co-founder T.J. Rodgers told FOX Business’ Liz Claman that businesses shouldn’t politicize their actions and that the basic principle of a division between corporate America and government should remain strong.
“The United States government and our defense department is going to the best in the world during the rest of my lifetime with or without Google,” Rodgers said on Wednesday.
The Silicon Valley legend said investors can make a moral choice on whether to invest in Google or not after the search engine company decided to suspend its contract with the U.S. military.
“Experimentation of having different models in a free market is what makes us strong,” Rodgers said.
