"According to six people who have worked closely with him across Amazon, Blue Origin and The Washington Post, the decisions are part of a marked shift in Bezos’s strategy towards Trump. These people painted a picture of a shrewd capitalist, making practical calculations to protect his businesses.
But they also believe Bezos is operating with a dose of fear about Trump, as well as resentment towards what he considers to be the Democrats’ “vilification” of Big Tech during the Biden administration.
Several of these people pointed to Amazon’s loss of that $10bn contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project (Jedi) — the knockout punch of Bezos’s ugly battle with Trump during his first term — as a watershed moment.
“There was a joke at the time that it didn’t cost Jeff Bezos $250mn to buy the Post, it cost him $10bn,” the newspaper’s former editor Marty Baron tells the Financial Times.
A person who met Bezos days after the Pentagon blow says he was “deeply hurt” by the ordeal. “He sat there going: ‘This is not right.’”
For Bezos there are enormous financial risks to Trump 2.0. His business interests are vulnerable to the tax and tariff debates in Washington, and hold tens of billions of dollars in government contracts spanning national security and space. They are also subject to significant oversight and pressure from regulators.
Perhaps most important to Bezos is the future of Blue Origin, his passion project that aims to make space travel accessible, as the company vies to win US government contracts — often in competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX."
https://www.ft.com/content/00e81e1a-a38f-4d45-89e8-0e8c162572b8
quality now.
