• Amazon Has Become a Prime Revolving-Door Destination in Washington – Mother Jones
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/03/amazon-has-become-a-prime-revolving-door-destination-in-washington

    A Mother Jones investigation has identified at least 247 US government officials and employees—with about 150 hailing from the intelligence, cybersecurity, law enforcement, and military fields—who were hired by Amazon in the past 10 years or so. About 200 of them have been retained by the fast-growing company since the start of 2017. This list is not comprehensive and represents what is likely only a portion of federal employees who left government service for Amazon. It was compiled by searching LinkedIn and locating people who, according to their profiles, had worked in the federal government directly before moving to Amazon; it relies on information provided by the platform’s users. There are no public records that track all the US officials and employees hired by Amazon or other firms.

    It is not uncommon for prominent firms to vacuum up government officials who can lobby their former agencies, win and manage lucrative government contracts, offer strategic or legal advice, or perform other services. Boeing, Raytheon, and other military contractors hire loads of people from the Defense Department and the armed services. (Most of the senior military officials—generals, admirals, and others—who leave the Pentagon for the private sector do become lobbyists for military firms.) Consulting firms, including McKinsey & Company, frequently recruit former US officials.

    “If you combine the quantity and breadth of their hires, Amazon may have more of a revolving door than any other American company now,” says Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There is almost no department of the US government Amazon is not interested in.” Timothy LaPira, a professor of political science and revolving-door expert at James Madison University, points out that Amazon wants people with government experience who can help the company understand the regulatory landscape and how to adapt to it: “Amazon is probably not buying access so much as they’re buying the expertise of what happens behind closed doors.”

    Amazon declined to comment for this story.

    The roster of Amazon hires spans the US government. The list includes an undersecretary for the Transportation Department, a Pentagon deputy general counsel, a US Treasury economist, a Federal Trade Commission associate general counsel, a Food and Drug Administration cybersecurity operations director, a US Trade Representative senior director, a National Economic Council senior director for trade policy, a former US ambassador to the World Trade Organization, a Justice Department senior counsel in the computer crime and intellectual property section, a National Transportation Safety Board public affairs director, a General Services Administration acting assistant commissioner, a Veterans Administration senior program manager, a Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services senior adviser for information technology, and an Office of Management and Budget chief acquisition officer.

    There are many from the military and national security agencies: a State Department internet policy adviser, a Department of Homeland Security cyberthreat intelligence analyst, a National Security Council director for space policy, a US Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, an FBI assistant director, a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency talent acquisition manager, a National Security Agency network analysis chief, a US Navy cryptologic warfare officer, a Defense Intelligence Agency operations officer, a senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a Defense Contract Audit Agency auditor, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence senior plans officer, and a CIA East Africa Branch chief. (According to the Intercept, Amazon has in recent years hired more than 20 former FBI agents for its global security center in Arizona.)

    One prominent example: In 2018, Lartease Tiffith, a senior counsel for then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), jumped to Amazon to become an in-house lobbyist and senior manager for privacy, security, and consumer protection. Previously, Tiffith had worked for Feinstein and the Justice Department.

    In 2020, Amazon spent $18.7 million on Washington lobbying—about a $2 million increase from the previous year—and assembled an influence-swaying army of 20 different lobbying firms and 118 individual lobbyists, which included 41 in-house lobbyists. One member of this force was veteran lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to President Joe Biden. Amazon signed a contract with Jeff Ricchetti a week after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election.

    Perhaps the most noticed move from DC politics to Amazon came in 2015 when Jay Carney, a onetime journalist who had been President Barack Obama’s press secretary, joined the firm as its senior vice president of global corporate affairs—Amazon’s top person in Washington. (Before working for Obama, Carney was communications director for then–Vice President Biden.) As Business Insider reported, Carney “oversees public policy and communications and is a member of Amazon’s elite ‘S-team,’ a group of 23 of the company’s most senior employees that helps shape culture and policy at Amazon.” He reports directly to Bezos.

    Amazon has grown substantially in recent years to become a company like no other in the United States. It has a wide array of interests that stretch across the entire landscape of the US government and that mostly fall within two fundamental areas: regulation and contracts. The firm, the second-largest employer in the United States (after Walmart), has long been criticized for its workplace conditions and is battling a much-watched union organizing effort in Alabama. (So it would deeply care about the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Labor Relations Board.) It owns Whole Foods. (Cue the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.) It faces international regulatory challenges. (Keep an eye on the USTR, the State Department, and the Commerce Department.) It has developed one of the largest trucking and delivery systems in the nation. (Watch the Department of Transportation.) Cyber-commerce and cybersecurity are top concerns. (Track the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI.) And with its Prime streaming service, there’s telecommunications, net neutrality, and broadband issues. (That means the Federal Communications Commission.) Intellectual property, privacy, Section 230, tax regulations, trade policy, mail delivery, infrastructure, energy, and sustainability—so many matters critical to Amazon are overseen by one or multiple government entities.

    And then there’s antitrust. As one of the biggest companies on the planet, Amazon needs to fret about regulators and officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission who could be concerned about its dominance in multiple markets and its possible use of monopolistic predatory pricing.

    Simultaneously, the US government has become an important source of revenue for Amazon, primarily though Amazon Web Services, which sells cloud-based services. AWS pitches itself on its website as a crucial supplier for the government: “The AWS Cloud provides secure, scalable, and cost-efficient solutions to support the unique requirements and missions of the US federal government. Our cloud services can be employed to meet mandates, reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and increase innovation across civilian agencies, intelligence community, and the Department of Defense.”

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