Jeff Bezos may more closely resemble an archetypal Bond villain rather than James Bond himself, but there’s a surprising link between the two men that explains how Bezos amassed his massive wealth and all the power that comes with it.
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that Jeff Bezos — founder of Amazon and Origin Blue — has an enormous amount of money. It also won’t come as a surprise that following that money comes an inordinate amount of power to shape the world in which he, and we, exist. From the internet-breaking hype caused by his potential $1.5 billion donation to MrBeast to his brand new $723 million superyacht, from his swole-inducing body transformation to his brand new $270 million mansion, this is a man who really has it all.
But this week it’s been revealed that one of Bexos’ many sources of cash actually creates a strange and unexpected link between him and the coolest man ever created, the one and only James Bond. Revealed in a newly released BBC documentary about the billionaire’s rise to power, interviews with former Amazon executives and regulators explain how Bond’s license to kill is intimately bound up with one of Jeff Bezos’s most important but lesser-known creations.
WATCH: The Amazon founder’s new superyacht is actually more Bond-villain than 007…
Bezos’ link to bond is intimately bound up with how Bezos went from being a “nerdy computer guy to king of the castle”, in the words of John Reily, a former Amazon Executive speaking to the BBC, who also claims that Bezos’s humility levels have significantly “dropped” as he’s transitioned from the former to the latter. Reily then goes on to explain that the foundation of Bezos’ connection with Bond is bound up with a fundamental misunderstanding that most people have about the Amazong corporation…
According to Reily, when people think of Amazon, they usually think about the retail business — the website you log into every so often to find something you need, and the process of that being delivered to your house, often at break-neck speed. What people overlook, however, are the “other business units of Amazon that support” the retail side. As an example, not only is Amazon “one of the largest trucker brokers in the USA, it’s also one of the largest airlines in the world”.
There is, however, one oft-overlooked behemoth in Bezos’ portfolio that dwarves all the others: Amazon Web Services, colloquially known as ‘AWS’. Robert Frederick, another retired Amazon Executive, explains that AWS provides cloud computing services for hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide, including “ridesharing apps, device manufacturers, and Fortune 500” companies alike. In fact, it’s so massive that “entire economies are based on the way in which they use AWS”.
But how does this relate to Bond? Well, “AWS is so powerful that even government agencies use AWS”, according to John Reily, including the American agencies like the CIA but also British agencies MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, all three of which have recently signed a £120 million (~$230 million AUD) deal to use AWS. Not only does this give Bezos a “God-like” view of the economy, but also allows him to “get governments to dance to his tune”, in a damning comment from Sally Hubbard, Former Director Of Enforcement Strategy at the Open Markets Insitute.
Where Bond uses good looks, even better charms, and a silenced pistol to change the course of world events, it seems that Jeff Bezos has managed to do all that and more without having to take a single life… so far as we know. While Bezos’ power is extremely problematic and requires a great deal more analysis than this writer is capable of, perhaps the most surprising element in all of this is that Bond’s license to kill may not be for ‘M’ to revoke, but rather the much more elusive figure of ‘JB’…