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The leader of the Amazon and owner of the space company Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, does not intend to give up potentially lucrative (but controversial) contracts of the Department of Defense.
Speaking Monday at the Wired 25 event in San Francisco, Bezos said, "We will continue to support the DoD and I think we should do it."
His comments come after Google announced that it would not bid for a $ 10 billion cloud computing and data-processing contract with the Pentagon, citing one of the reasons the contract violated the principles. society governing the ethical uses of artificial intelligence technologies. Amazon, as well as companies like IBM and Oracle, continue to bid on the contract.
Bezos' comments come after Blue Origin signed a contract with the US Air Force to help it in "security missions into the National Security Area (NSS)," the company said last week.
Bezos acknowledged that some "people are in conflict about it," referring to technology companies developing state-of-the-art technology for the government that can be used controversially. Some Amazon employees, for example, reportedly asked Bezos to stop selling facial recognition services to various law enforcement agencies in the United States.
According to Bezos, one of the hallmarks of a great leader is to "make the right decision even if it is unpopular".
Bezos thinks that the United States will have problems if technology companies do not collaborate with the government on technologies related to military and national security.
"It's a big country," said Bezos. "He must be defended."
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Regarding Blue Origin, Bezos said the space flight services company was "the most important thing I'm working on, but I will not live to get everything fixed". launches a rocket in 2019 and sends six people in space as part of its mission of "tourism" in space.
"I do not stop telling the team that it's not a race," Bezos said. "I want it to be the safest space vehicle in the history of space vehicles."
But Amazon and Blue Origin are not the only efforts of Bezos. Bezos and others are building a $ 42 million clock that will work every year for 10,000 years. The purpose of this clock is to encourage people to think long term for the benefit of humanity. Bezos said that he believed "powerfully in symbols and they change the thinking."
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