Cloud, Knowledge, and Political Protests Mark the 2022 AWS Summit

July 13, 2022

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It was an surprising day on the Javits Middle. What began with a sudden change within the keynote lineup on the AWS Summit right here in New York wound up with a cascade of protesters disrupting the proceedings.

CTO Werner Vogels had been booked to ship the opening keynote on the occasion, however Martin Beeby, principal developer advocate for Amazon Net Providers (AWS), took the stage as a substitute. It was then introduced that Vogels had referred to as out sick from the summit and Beeby stepped in, main off with the same old rundown of providers and assets on the cloud supplier’s disposal. “We now have 84 availability zones throughout 26 geographical areas,” Beeby stated.

His presentation included notes on Amazon’s funding in renewable vitality, nearly 16 gigawatts of it from such sources as photo voltaic and wind initiatives throughout 19 nations. Beeby additionally mentioned how the legacy of early innovations affect future improvements, citing how the width of railroad tracks grew to become an element within the improvement of rocket boosters for area journey as a result of the rockets needed to be moved by rail. “Choices you make previously keep on with you for a very long time in a number of attention-grabbing methods,” he stated. “Enterprise constraints can date again to choices you made years earlier than.”

Martin Beeby giving his keynote on the AWS Summit. Picture credit score: Joao-Pierre S. Ruth

Beeby associated that to choices firms make concerning the cloud, which can have long-term influence on future functions. He additionally mentioned how the ever-growing movement of knowledge generated by techniques, typically in terabytes and petabytes of knowledge, could be processed through cloud assets. “The cloud has modified the way in which that we do enterprise, the way in which that we are able to retailer huge quantities of data,” Beeby stated.

The primary full hour of the keynote ran just about on observe, together with extra dialogue of knowledge technique, scalability, flexibility, and safety. “We need to attempt to turn into a extra data-driven group,” Beeby stated.

Protesters Take Motion at AWS Summit

All the pieces modified when protesters took motion within the closing half-hour of the keynote.

Take heed to “DOS Will not Hunt: Cloud, Knowledge, and Political Protests on the AWS Summit” on Spreaker.

Within the midst of Beeby’s dialogue of machine studying, a protester stood up straight behind me, so shut I felt him brush by my proper shoulder as he rose.

“When will Amazon reply to the 1000’s of individuals demanding Amazon Net Providers cease cashing in on violence the world over?” the protester shouted. “Your platform powers racist policing, mass deportations, and warfare!”

This echoed the disruption of Vogels’s keynote on the 2019 AWS Summit, the place related questions had been shouted at that occasion.

On Tuesday, the protester cited Amazon’s participation in Mission Nimbus, the migration of great components of Israel’s authorities IT infrastructure to the cloud, a contract collectively awarded in 2021 to Amazon and Google. Concrete particulars about Nimbus are a bit laborious to seek out, however one of many complaints raised by some shareholders — and even some staff at Google and Amazon — is the venture would transfer a lot of Israel’s public cloud to assets inside its personal borders and authorized jurisdiction, probably assuaging worldwide boycotts and different stress on the nation stemming from its ongoing battle with Palestine.

At first, Beeby halted his remarks till the protester was led away by occasion workers, ready till the shouts died down earlier than persevering with.

However that was only the start. Different protesters stood up one after the opposite elsewhere within the viewers. Every time, they too, had been led away by occasion workers — solely to be adopted by one other heckling protest. One protester repeatedly shouted, “No extra tech for ICE and police!” earlier than being picked up and bodily faraway from the venue. (ICE is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement company.)

This sequence repeated a number of instances with Beeby halting, typically directing protesters to talk with Amazon representatives away from the keynote area, then trying to renew his presentation.

The final protester to disrupt the keynote stood up on the tail finish of the speech to shout: “Civil rights organizations from throughout the nation wrote a letter to Amazon Net Providers calling on the corporate to finish its plans to host the damaging Division of Homeland Safety HART [Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology] biometric database,” the protester stated. “This database will gasoline mass surveillance and discrimination.”

Such public clashes might proceed as home and international authorities entities flip more and more to personal sector know-how suppliers to replace, revamp, and overhaul their IT assets. AWS and friends similar to Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle regularly compete for these probably profitable contracts, typically difficult one another in court docket over the way in which such contracts are awarded.

At Tuesday’s occasion, Beeby apologized to the viewers for the disruptions, every of which solely lasted a few minutes, and continued with the remainder of his presentation.

Exterior the Javits Middle, a small group of protesters remained to proceed their vocal, but peaceable, outcry geared toward AWS. Not the primary time the corporate has handled criticism about its enterprise practices and never prone to be the final time such subjects come up, although a lot of the viewers on the summit was lower than supportive of the protesters.