Jeff Bezos prepares to keep dealing with the United States Defense Department

Some business might be reassessing their United States Defense Department agreements, however Amazon’s not one of them, CEO Jeff Bezos statedMonday

Bezos, speaking at the Wired25 Conference at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco, stated he will continue to support the United States DefenseDepartment Earlier this month, cloud computing competitor Google took out of the bidding for a $10 billion Pentagon agreement after worker demonstrations. Google stated the job might contravene its concepts for ethical usage of AI.

“If big tech companies are going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, we are in big trouble,” Bezos stated. “This is a great country, and it does need to be defended.”

He included that in spite of its issues, the United States is “still the best country in the world,” and if it depended on him, he ‘d let anybody concerned the nation who wishes to.

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Jeff Bezos discusses challenges facing big tech

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Bezos became the world’s richest person last October, thanks to the surging value of Amazon, which he founded in 1994 in his garage and stewarded into the world’s biggest e-commerce site. He still owns 16 percent of the company.

Amazon has upended the way we all shop for goods, and it’s now aiming to change how we interact with our devices. The company’s Alexa digital voice assistant works with more than 20,000 devices, including the new Echo smart speakers and Amazon’s new voice-activated microwave. It’s often considered by experts to be one of the smartest smart assistants available. And Amazon is one of the world’s biggest providers of cloud computing systems. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Amazon rival Google, on Monday at Wired 25, said his company would continue working with the Defense Department, but not when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous weaponry. He noted it’s not just Google employees who have been concerned about the use. 

“If you talk about senior researchers working in the field, they’re worried that when you’re so early with powerful tech, how do you thoughtfully work your way through it?” Pichai said. 

Space ambitions

Bezos’ ambitions, meanwhile, extend beyond Amazon and cloud computing. In addition to Blue Origin, he has moved into media with his purchase of The Washington Post. Last month, Bezos made good on a promise to start giving back more of his enormous wealth, announcing the Day One charitable fund and a $2 billion donation to help with education and fight homelessness.

Blue Origin competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX when it comes to space exploration. SpaceX has received more attention, both for its successes and its failures, over the past few years and is further along in developing its business. But Blue Origin technically beat Musk to the punch with the first successful rocket launch and recovery — on land at its west Texas facility in 2015.

At Wired25, Bezos said Blue Origin “is the most important thing I’m working on, but I won’t live to see it all rolled out.” He added that it’s important to take risks and work on things that are different from what everyone else is doing.

“You want risk taking, and you want people to have vision that most people don’t agree with,” he said. “We have never needed to think long term as a species. And we finally do.”

Bezos said he believes in Blue Origin so much, he’s investing even more money in the space company next year — “a little more” than a billion dollars, up from his previous investment of $1 billion annually.

“I just got the news from the team,” he said. Bezos added that he never says no when Blue Origin asks for money. 

“We are starting to bump up against the absolute true fact that Earth is finite,” he said said. “Blue Origin, what we need to do is lower the cost of access to space.”

CNET’s Ben Rubin contributed to this report.

Originally published at 12:25 p.m. PT.
Update at 7 p.m. PT: Adds Google comments and shift order. 

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