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The revolving door between Amazon and The White House


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2021 Mar 8, 8:51pm   162 views  0 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

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...

“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.)
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