Keith Alexander was the head of the US National Security Agency when department official Edward Snowden revealed information about the NSA’s massive surveillance of American citizens, including wiretapping and personal data collection programs. Due to the scandal that erupted, the general was forced to leave government service in 2013.

Alexander is a controversial figure for many in the tech community. This is due to the fact that it was under him that the NSA implemented secret surveillance and data collection programs, which became known thanks to Snowden. First of all, we are talking about the state program PRISM, which was used for large-scale data collection and led to the compromise of systems of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook, but not Amazon.

Alexander himself was quite critical of the leaks by Snowden and even suggested introducing a ban on the coverage of these documents by journalists. “ I don’t think it’s right that newspaper reporters have all these documents, 50,000 are all they have, and they sell and distribute them. You know it just doesn’t make sense. We must find a way to stop this. I do not know how to do that. This is more about courts and politicians, but from my point of view, it would be wrong to allow this to continue, ”Alexander expressed his position in 2013.

The appearance of the NSA general on the board of directors is expected to open up new opportunities for the company in the area of ​​defense contracts – an area that Amazon has focused on in recent years. We will remind, Amazon was one of the main candidates for the Pentagon contract in the field of cloud computing in the amount of $ 10 billion, but ultimately lost to Microsoft. Amazon is currently in litigation against the federal government over this contract, as the company believes the Pentagon’s decision was influenced by the statements of US President Donald Trump.