[Real Clear Investigations] In June 2019, Susan Gordon stood on a stage at the Washington Convention Center. Behind her loomed three giant letters, "AWS," the abbreviation for Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of the giant Internet retailer. After three decades at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon had risen to one of the top jobs in the cloak-and-dagger world: principal deputy director of national intelligence. From that perch she publicly extolled the virtues of Amazon Web Services and the cloud services the tech giant provides the CIA.She told the crowd that the intelligence community’s 2013 decision to sign a multi-year, $600 million contract with AWS for cloud computing "will stand as one of those that caused the greatest leap forward. ... The investment we made so many years ago in order to be able to try and harness the power of the cloud with a partner who wanted to learn and grow with us has left us not only ready for today but positioned for tomorrow."
The agreement was also a "real game-changer," said André Pienaar, founder and CEO of a tech firm called C5 Capital, whose business includes reselling AWS services. "When the CIA said they were going adopt the AWS cloud platform," Pienaar said at another AWS event. "People said if the U.S. intelligence community has the confidence to feel secure on the AWS cloud, why can’t we?"
Gordon left government in August 2019, two months after her AWS summit talk. In November 2019 she became senior advisor to a consultancy with close Amazon connections and in April joined the board of defense contractor with extensive AWS business.
Gordon is one of scores of former government officials who have landed lucrative work in Big Tech.