Transcripts For KQED Frontline 20240713

And that assumption would be incorrect. The tools are not what call battle tested. Some people asking if amazo is a monopoly. The question for the democracy is, e we okay with one company esntially winning capitalism . How do you and jeff think about the call to break you guys up . Simply because the companys be successful doesnt mean its somehow too big. Narrator now on frontline. Mi dotion was very much the idea. Narrator amazon empire. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Anby the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support is provided by th johnd catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. And by the Ford Foundation working with visionarithe frontlines of social change worldwide. Additional support is provided by the abramfoundation, committed to excellence in journalism. The park foundation,di ted to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. Thjohn and Helen Glessner family trust. Supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. The heisingsimons foundation opportunity, and possibilities. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from ura debonis and scott nathan. Jeff bezos has already conquered the retail frontier. Now hes got a plan to colonizel thets. Bezos is laying out his plans for colonizing space. Bezos is known for going big, d now hes literally shooting for the moon. Narrator in may of 2019, jeff bezos, the richest person on the planet, unvled his latest invention. This is blue moon. Its time to go back to theim moon, thisto stay. Jeff has said over and over again that the most important work hes doing is work in space. What hes built in amazon is really imptant and really interesting, and its, its relutionized commerce. But its only revolutionized commerce. Narrator bezoss plan is to chart a new course for the future of humanity. Manufactured worlds rotated to create arficial gravity with centrifugal force. These are very large structures, miles on end. And they hold a Million People or more each. S narrator i idea hes had since he was a teenager. This is me in high school. And i want to ghlight this quote the earth is finite, and if the World Economy and population is to keep expanding, space is the only way to go. I still believe that. The way jeff bezos sees is it is that consumerism is an example of how tods society lives better than our parents did and ougrandparents. And he wants, you know, future generations to continue to have an increasingly better lifestyle. A the beautiful. People are going to want to live here. Narrator ezos unveiled his extraterrestrial plans at a time of growing concern about the empire hes built here on earth. Amazon is the great disrupter, from books to retailo to grocerys. Narrator for more than 25 years, jeff bezos has been t srupting and transforming almost every aspof our modern lives. Once you Start Connecting the dots, you see that amazon is a buildi of the invisible infrastructure for our futures. Amazon announced a Healthcare Partnership. Amazon is helping the c. I. A. Build a secure cloud. How much of the internet do you run . T ta good question, um, its a lot, though. Narrator but in recent years, amazon and bezos have come under scrutiny for their aggressive tactics and expanding power. bezos laughing g everythat is admirable abouamazon is also something that we should fear about it. Narrator for the past year weve been investigating how jeff bezos built his empire and at what cost. And so think about this. Big things start small. Narrator jeff bezoss empire has its roots not in silicon valley, but on wall st. Thats where the young princeton graduate went to work in the early 1990s, at a Secretive Hedge Fund called d. E. Shaw. David shaw was thone who w revolutionizl street by introducing data. And i think jeff really embraced that, that idea that, hey, if u you have datimately, you win. One of ththings that david shaw asked jeff bezos to do was wto go and instigate ne businesses, and in particular 90s called the world wide web. dialup modem connecting we all know that a Communications Revolution is unrway in this country. What is the internet . Its sort of the mother of all networks. Is information highways. T kind of like your Remote Control to the world. Nartor bezos was quick to see the Untapped Potential of the new digital landscape and was determined to get in on it. I came across thistartlin statistic that web usage was growing at 2,300 a year. So, i decided i would try andin find a bs plan that made sense in the context of that growth, and i picked books as the first best product to sell online. Because books are incribly unusual in one respect, and that is that there are more items inhe boocategory than there are items in any other category by far. So, when you have that many items,ou can litally build a store online that couldnt exist any other wa narrator the store he was imagining didnt exist, so he decided to build it himself. Ea the reaction to jeffs to start selling books on the internet was pretty incredulous, you know, from a lot of the people close to him. His mom tried to convince him to just do it at night or over the weekends. She didnt want to see him give upis job. Jeff called, and he told me h thand mackenzie were quitting their jobs, and they were moving to seattle and starti a company. Said, great, well, what are you going to do . He said, were going to sell books. I said, nic he said, on the internet. I said, oh. Jeff, why will anybody buy anything from you . And he said, well, were going to have more books than anybody else. Narrator one of the first names bezos considered for his newebsite was relentless. Com. Why relentless . Relentless meant, we move on no matter what. He ultimately, obviously, decided that relentless wasnt quite the right fit. Amazon, earths largest river, was. Am on means gigantic. In terms of relentlessness, opping at nothing, thats, is that an aptf description of no. It not that jeff stops at nothing, its that when jeffin sets hison a goal that he thinks he can achieve, he wont op until hes proven wrong or until he achieves it. Jeff and mackenzie had rented a house in bellevue. D then we moved to a small, secondfloor office in the south part of seattle. Narrator shel kaphan was amazon empyee number one, one of nine former amazon insiders who agreed to talk on camera. Whathe company is now was nowhere in my wildest imagination. Nowhere,o, the fact that it could have thethe kind of position in the world thatt has now, i had no clue. Narrator in july 1995, amazon. Com went ve. It was an incredible novelty, was tiny and obscure, and its very hard to imagine, but the entire universe that amazon now dominates did not exist. Amazon. Com, this virtual shop claims to be the Worlds Largest bookstore. Narrator it didnt take long for bezoss vision to prove prescient. What makes us different is vast selection, convenience we deliver right to the desktop. If our catalog were printed on paper, it would be the size of sen new york city ebooks. Narrator he Company Quickly outgrew the garage and soon had more than 50 employees. In 1996, james marcus applied to be number 55. There was a very palpableth excitement in air at this place, and of course at thisin jeff bezos was the first person to interview every prospective employee. So i was ushered into his office. He wanted to see how fast you were on your feet. A o always wanted to know your s. A. T. Scores. He nted to know your s. A. T. Scores . Every time, yes. How old were you at the time . I was 36 or 37. This is the origil sign that i made for amazon. Com. Bluepray paint on white post board. Jeff wasnt a figure out folklore at that point, he wase not thealthiest man in the world. Heres my computer, amazon. Com up onhe screen. Hello, jeff bezos. He was a small, nondescript, ndyhaired man sting at a desk wh quite a large and ertive laugh. laughing in multiple scenes was a normal guy to a sort of he amazing extent. Hal 9000 hat, very important. Hal and i share a birthday, were th born january 12. It belied, you know, an enormous, napoleonic ambition. One of the people i really like, thomas edison, heres a model of his original light bulb. Hes famous for saying, one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. laughs it turns out ideas are the easy part, execution is everything. Domination was on jeffs nd from the beginning. One of his sort of secondincommand people said to me, you have to understand that jeff wants to sell many more things than books. And jeffs idea is that in the neardistant future, you could buy a kayak from amazon. And if, and after you brout the kayak, you cou figure out good places to kayak and buy so, those ambition veryazon. Clear, and this was very early on. But he was clearly thinking in t those terms fr getgo. How did that ring to you at the time . A little bit exciti a little bit nutty. Amazon. Com, very good website. You should really try it. bezos laughs if you signed on to work at aa kind of futuristic owned it was suddenly talking about selling, you know, every object in the iverse, you just werent sure how seriously to take it. bezos laughing bezos screaming playfully narrator though his public image was often unserious. That was awesome narrator inside company, bezos was a hardcharging manager relentlessly focused on the principle that would make amazon one of the most trusted brds in the world the customer always comes first. This culture of customer obsession. Obsessive focus on customer. Obsesses over our customers. Totally obsessing over the custerxperience. We used to call it customer ecstasy. It means building, delivering, focusing on your customer. And we did it, you know, in the very, very early days at every narrator jennist was there in the early days and is one of six top amazon executives the company put forward to speak to us. Customer obsession was our north star. And so, you know, it was a place where wenew we were a part of something that was new, the internet. There was an excitement that we were doing something that hadnt been done before. We were all aligned around building for customers. Hey, you guys. Hey. bezos laughs er ive heard was an empty chair that would often be put at meetings. Yea who was in the pty chair . Yeah, so that empty chair was there to remind us all to understand the customer, have empathy for the customer, understand the details of the customer expernce. The customer isnt there, we have to bring forward the voice of the customer. phone ringing thank you for calling. Amazon. C narrator and bezos quickly world, he could understandnline exactly how customers were behaving. All orders do need be placed online. It was made clear from the beginning th Data Collection waalso one of amazons businesses. All Customer Behavior that flowed through the site was recorded and tracked. And that itself was a valuableit comm have you visited our website . We could track how a customer navigated through the site. So we could see what you lookeds at, we couldsee what you paused at, we could see what you puin your basket but didn order, we could see what youut in your basket and did order. Tedthats when we st realizing, man, this is rich. This is rich, rich, rich. And so weve used it forer hing. What do you do with that information . Thats the data that allows us to predict, or try to predict, what books that you would like that you havent discovered yet. B narrator ezos treated the site as a laboratory, where he studied Customer Behavior along with his chief scientist andreas weigend. I was shocked to see how predictable people are. If you take the time of the day into accou, if you take maybe how long they werethe site site, last time, how lontheyre on the site today, you know what theyre falling for. Whoever owns, collects, the data, if you have access to it and rights to data, then you are king. Its all about the data. Everything. One of the most fascinating kind of tools we have at o disposal is the ability to do active experiments. Its, you know, its kind of this huge laboratory. We did not think about it as exploiting, we thought about helping peopleake better decisions. I was starting to feel that that was ls respectful toward the consumer, who was,fter all, supposed to be our god, the person whose ecstasy was our very reason for being. And it was closer to getting a cow into a milking stall and extracting as many pails as ssible during each visit and that felt a little more unsavory. But that was the business of amazon. Amazon has added 880,000 new narrator while bezos was using these insights to bring more and more customers into amazon. The number of customers who see the website has increa fourfold. Ne narrator there was o thing he hadnt done yet. The companys never made a profit. Thats right. Why. How does that. . That. It seems like a new math, doesnt it . It does. Ra nr bezos would spend years losing money trying to beat his competition, and he convinced investors to go ong with it. One of jeff bezosgreatest accomplishnts has been his g ability toet wall street to accept the fact the first 20somyears, amazon wasnt going to be very profitable. And thats okay because theyre building infrastructe at ll cate huge opportunities for them to gain scale and gain customers and gain business. Narrator he spelled it out in a letter to shaholders after the Company First went blic its all about the long term, he wrote, than shortterm profits or wallr strections. He essentially says, we are going to forego profits in order to take market share. That our strategy is to lose money, which enables us then to put other companies out of business who cant afford to lose money. Narrator that strategy wouldnt sit well with critics like stacy mitchell, who advocates for small businesses. Beginning, hes signaling to shareholders, i have a strategy to monopolizthe market, and thats going to reward you, but its going to be far down the road, d will you come along with me . And they said yes. Narrator investors also recognized bezos essentiale vantager physical stores, which had to charge their customers sales tax, unlike online businesses. So, not collecting sales tax gave amazon a big leg up over bricks and mortar retailers. And that was central to their early strategy of gaining market share as quickly as theya n. What booksellers were saying to me is that, this is drivingt my customeamazon. Theyll come into the store, theyll browse, they find what thgo want, but then theyll buy it on amazon, because they can save that salex. So it was a very irksome,y, eaig issue for the book vendors, first of all, they were kind of the canaries in thene so to speak, and then lots of other retailers. Amazon has added thousands of warehouse workers and three million square feet of space. Nartor amazons salestax advantage would be central to its success as it expanded beyond books, into other products. And we have a fantasticn select things you can look at. Electronics and then of course toys. Yeah, thank you, here is, weve got have the friendly pokemon. This is more than ten times the selection th you will find in a typical, physical World Software store. Narrator but bezos was still a long way from his goal of amaz being the place where y could buy everything online. drills whirng and he saw a way to achieve it. Amazon could soon become the walmart of the internet. Narrator the were thousands of businesses eager to sell online. Bezos offered them a way to do it. Amazon is tnsforming itself from an online bookstore to an online mall. Nrator he transformed amazon into a retail platform ere anyone could sell their goods to his customers and invited thousands of othero businesses a part of it. Its the easiest place r anybody, small or large, who wants to set up shop online to sell online, because ty can access our 12 millionplus customers. Anybody, all comers. Werealking about hundreds of thousands of companies withy literalltens of millions of products. Narrator namebrand stores started selling on bez platform, and so did tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs. Everyone knew amazon. Com. The only people thatnew superduperhoops. Com were the ones that were searching to buy a basketball hoop ansaw our name on an advertisement. To us it was really a nobrainer. We knew that we would, you know, increase our sales. First year we did 100,000, next year we did a million, we did two million, four million, we were doubling every year in the early days. Narrator it was great for the companies and even greater for jeff bezos. Amazon has become the most merecognizable name in ecrce. Narrator not only would he take a cut of everything other businesses sold, hed also keep his own store on the platform, competing against everyone elset he marketplace he owned and controlled. E owns the main street. Ai he has the mstreet real estate. Corner, the entire main street. Narrator how amazon wouldr marketplace would allyine become a question for government regulators, but early on, theree ndications. The first to see them were Book Publishers. Amazon took over a large market share of the Publishing Industry very, very fast. Athey were very quickly i position to demand concessions. U know, i think that was moment where publishers started to realize, oh, wait a minute, like, we. Theyre our partner, but they now have the beginnings of a boot on our windpipe. Narrator inside the company, they had launched a strategy that some called thlle project, because theyd heard bezos wanted them to pursue publishers the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle. Well, you dont go after the strongest. Its like the cheetah. The cheetah looks for the weak, looks for the sick, looks for the small, thats what you go for. So dont start with, younow, number one publisher. Start with number seven publisher, and by the time you get to number three, two, and one, the noise has gone,otten back to them. Theyre going to know this is u coming, and chances are y be able to settle that without a fullon war. We were just this little nym and pop publishing com publishingoetry books and translated ficti. The number of booknnisrly 2000s, johnson was selling on amazon had been rising steadily. Then one day, he got a phone call. Our distributor called us up to talk abouour amazon contract. S and d, i went out to dinner last night with amazon, it was like going out to dinner with the godfather. They want a kickback. He thats tord he used, kickback. And he said they wanted four percent more of our sales. Was that unusual . It was. In our experience, it was totally unprecedented, yes. Narrator randy miller ran the european book teamays he saw nothing wrong with amazons tough tactics to challenge publishers on prices and profit margins. In in order to bring the line, we would actually take them out of automated merchandising, take their prices up to list price; we wou put references on the product page, their product page, saying, you want it cheaper, you want this book for, on this topic for a way cheaper price . K clre. And wed send them to whoever we thought their worst competitor was. That was how amazon their vendors toto comply. stammering but thats an old walmart trick, i mean, it wasnt like amazon created that. And it made, it made a difference and, you know, jeff kind of got excited about it. Narrator when Dennis Johnson still refused to give in to amazons terms, he says the buy button on all melville hse books suddenly disappeared, making it impossible for customers to purchase them on amazon i mean, this is the company that referred to little publishers like me as wounded gazelles, i believe . Thats how they think, thats how he tught from the beginning. What at the time i called ay bribe. And our attitude toward amazon was, you know, render unto asesar that which is caesars. And then carry oest as you can. Jeff bezos may say that amazon comes ong and has given publishers like yourself access to a huge Distribution Channel for your books. Has amazon been goodor your business . Well, absolutely they have. Se any boer that sells our books is good for our business. So, inot complaining that amazon is selling our books. Im just complaining of the way that their tactics are hurting the industry i love. Narrator in addition to granting interviews, amazon responded to wrien questions. Regarding Dennis Johnsons characterizations, it told us, amazon disagrees with this account. Were you uncomfortable with that sort of ruthlessness ever . Well, no, cause i was in retail i mea people think thats ruthless. You know, i looked, and some people at amazon, wow, thats kind of mean, andm like, oh, a retailer and a supplier having aisagreement . St the presses it happens all the time. I mean, you know, look, youve got a finite margin, and somebodys going to have to give. Andand a lot of times amazont wahe one giving. Kindle is a purposebuiltg readvice. Narrator the tension between ramp up even furthh theers would unveiling of the kindle, which helped the industrtransition to the digital age, but gave amazon more power to set prices lower. And new releases are only 9. 99. Narrator around that time, barry lynn, an advocate for broad antitrust enforcement, was growing increasingly concerned by what he was hearing from publishers. If the door was open, the publisher wod say, hey, you know, amazon, theyre just a terrific customer, theyre our biggest cuomer. Ey buy the most books, they we love them. Books. Then you close the door, and they say, amazon is destroying our business model, theyre destroying our business, theyh have way too mwer, we must do something about them. Narrator lynn wanted publishers to speak up publicly and thought federal titrust regulators might in astigate whether amazon w monopoly, illegally abusing itsi market dominan anticompetitive ways. T ayd say, no way, im not going to talk about amazon in public. In im not taabout them on capitol hill. They will take retribution against me. To which you responded . Ll, thats why we have to do something about it. R narraennifer cast ran amazons Books Division in its formative years. Weve had a difficult time in some ways getting publishers to talk to us on camera about amazon. In part, it seems the reason is that theyre afraid. Atw do you react to that, publishers find it uncomfortable toalk about amazon publicly . I dont know, i mean, ii havent seen that. In yeah. I havent beeour shoes. Im sure they have. I mean, if youre saying that theythey dont talk negatively about us, i mean, i know they have a lot um, you know, ii dont know why they wouldnt speak their minds. We certainly value speaking our minds. There is this llknown anecdote about cheetahs and gazelles, this gazelle program. Do you knoabout that . I dont. Weve talked to former amazonians about it,e jeff had said, we should basilly try to negotiate with Book Publishers and try to get better terms and treat the smaller publishers as a cheetaha would go aftounded gazelle. I didnt hear the cheetah and gazelle example, buthat we were looking for was people that were willing to move away from the old model of bricks and mortar to a new model, which was, you know, aa Virtual Store that had many different types of opportunities to present theirme books to cus. I want to talk a little bit about how we think about innovation at amazon. Com. Narrator amazon would begin to accumulate even more power in 2005, when bezos quietly rolled out a revolutionary new Program Amazon prime. Now they ve something called the prime shipping program. Amazon prime we only launched this a week ago u pay 79 a year, and you get twoday shipping for free. Narrator it was a risky bet, and it paid off. The lynchpin, or the glue, if you will, and probably the seminal moment in amazons business history, was the introduction of what has become the most successful membership prime. M in history, and thats many of you in this audnce will already be amazon prime b members,less you. This is very much appreciated. It changes the way you shop. Narrator ventually more than 150 Million People would sign up for the Free Shipping a tremendous expense for amazon. But to bez, it was worth it. The prime program at amazon is one of the most importantof drivermazons growth. When you go on and look to buy a product, and its availae in o days, delivered to your door anywhere ithe country, that Amazon Prime Program becom a mechanism that keeps bringing you back as a customer to keep a buyi keep searing for new products on amazon. Narrator twoday delivery anywhere in the country was a big promise for a companthat, at the time, had less than ten warehouses. So bezos went on a buildg spree. Across the country amazon wareuses began to spring up, filled with millions of products being sold on bezoss platform. Hed call them Fulfillment Centers, and theyd create hundreds of thousands of jobs in places hard hit by the great ten percent of pennsylvania residents unemployed. Job market is in complete disarray. Narrator like allentown, pennsylvania. At that time, it was tremendous news that an employea was coming aually opening a facility and hiring people, versus, you know, gutting halfaf the narrator spencer ser was a Business Reporter for the allenwn morning call when amazon opened in the area in 2010. He began hearing stories about working in the warehouse. T people are basically ins big, sprawling warehouse thats stocked with goods ivery random fashion. Ged they have scanners that and people are walki maybe ten, 15 miles a day. So people just kind of crisscrossing this big wehouse all day long. Narrator as workers told him abmet the punishing pace to the daily quota of packages, and the intense heat, soper and his lleagues started to investigate further. People really felt like amazon was pying fast and loose with their, with their health. Narrator soper disred there had been numerous complaints to authorities at the Occupational Safety and health administration, osha. Ty actually had a complaint om an emergencyroom doctor who called their hotline one day saying, listen, you might want to check out this amazon place. Ive had, like, people parading through my emergency room to be trted for heat stress. There was a Security Guard who worked in the facility who sent a complaint to osha saying that he saw pregnanwomen suffering and so theres just, like, these red flags right and le. Narrator after an investigation, osha said amazon needed to keep the temperatures in the warehouses lower. In a statement at the time, thea compan it installed new Industrial Air conditioning and pledged that worker safety was its numberone priority. Amazon is shrewd businessople, shrewd businesspeople know when have leverage. And when yourthe only shop hiring people in town, you can push them a lot harder than you can whenwhen theyve got alternatives. Narrator or the following years, amazon would hire hundreds of thousands of workers and become one of the largest jobs n creators ie country. At the Fulfillment Centers, bezos experimented with new techniques and technologies to boost productivity. I willingness to experime the key to be able to do new things. So we do, you know, hundds of experiments every day in our Fulfillment Centers to get a little bit better. Kind of like incremental invention. Narrator when a Company Called kiva perfected a warehouse robot, amazon bought the whole company. Amazon has acquired kiva systs. They make shipping robots. Narrator it helped transform the Work Environment in amazons warehouses. When i firsshowed up at amazon in 1999, i led our Global Operations team. Ef narrator wilke created the Amazon Fulfillment Center system and is one of two c. E. O. S under jeff bezos. As weve added 200,000 robots, in that same time frame since 2012 weve added 300,000 people in our fulfillment nters. So what happens is the robots change the work, so they allow us. People dont have walk as far, which is a complaint that weve heard in the past. They make the job safer, they make them higheruality, becauswe present a smaller set of options totomployees. And thats all good for customers, and its good for employees too. Narrator but at the same time, complaints have persisted. Peoplwhove worked in warehouses for decades say, this is different. This is not the same. Were here today because wewa nt to make sure that these workers know about their rights in the workplace, especially around heat. Narrator sheheryar kaoosjite is an advoor warehouse workers in the san bernardino, california, area an amazon hub, with ten Fulfillment Centers and over 15,000 employees. Because of the way thats, amazon operaecause of the way that they set their rates for productivity, its a lot harder work physically but alsoa psycholoy. Narrator we sat down with a group in san berrdino whod recently worked at amazon. When they first got here, i thought it was exciting. Like, for me, i was thinkinge macould find aa place where, you know, im going to t roots of a good job, y know, move up inin the place. While, i was like,es nor a way. Its like, okay, this is where i can probably make are. But once you worked there for a certain amount of time, itse, just lts just not realistic, how they expect you to work. Narrator like dozens of workers wevspoken to around the country, they say theyve struggled to keep up with the rate amazon expect them toac pick anditems. How realistic are the rates that theyre givg you . I mean, whats. Not realistic at all. Notnot realistic . No. Theres absolutely no way to make rate, you know, you got to find little ways toto cheat it, because once you hit rate, the end of the week, they raised it, they bump it up ain. Rt cause they seeing, hey, people can hit those rates, can hit those numbers, hey,pu let them a little harder. Every week it seemed like it was goinup. You have security cameras right behind you at all times,ki 24seven. G at you and if you dont meet standards or the rates, youre out the door, youre just disposable. Every worker haa scanner at all times that basically track exactly where youre at. And they have a little blue line at the bottom of the screen, and it has, like, how many seconds that you have t have idone by the time it hits ro, and it puts you into panic mode. And pretty much you cant talk to people, you cant be in the same aisle as them, you just constantly have to sit there scanning like a robot all day long. If they catch you not scanning, you get a writeup. And what theyre doing is theyre producing this mass of data that they are using to be able to analyze the entire workforce. Were not treated as human beings, were not even treated as robots. Were treated as part of the data stream. Its the incentive atwa anhouse, on any assembly line, to get the most out of any worker. Yes. To make rates, toto be as efficient as possible, to be as productive as possible. So, i dont see exactly whats different about amazon as opposed to any other warehouse. Amazon is the cutting edge. Other warehouses areing to adopt these technologies, her companies are definitely i interestedn doing what amazon is doing. Data collection could becomee basically andard for all workers, and that theres. Youre never good enough,bl youre nevere to keep up. Narrator amazon told us work rates are not based on individual employees performance, and that the scanning devices workers use are not for tracking people but inventory a common practice in the warehouse industry. Weve talked to workers around the count,nt both curnd former workers. Theyve described the pace of work as being really grueling. The early thinking about rates and how far you could push human beings in tms of their productivity, what was the thinking about that . Well, obviously if the rates are too high, youre not going work. Ve peoplehowing u so, we have 600,000 people at the coany, most of them are in the Fulfillment Centers, and theythey come to work every day, they st for years. These are considered great jobs in the hundreds of communities where we have fulfillm centers all over the world, and in the u. S. We have, almost every state has an operation in it, and people come to work because these are great jobs. Th re safe, we pay double the minimum wage, the national benefits. Age, we have terrific the benefits for the folks that work on the floor are the same benefits that my family s access to our family leave is like 20 weeks. So, the rates are t so that we can accomplish what we need to, which is get orders to customers in aa reasoble time and in a highquality way, and that creates a workplace that pple want to come back to, and they do. Narrator amazon wouldnt tell us how long fulfillmentcenter workers stayo on the job ooften theyre injured. But workers we spoke to say the rates are higher than other warehouses and that the company rebuffs attempts to unionize. Are do not believe unions e in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, orr most intly, our associates. Narrator this is a clip from a video the mpany says it used in the past to teach managers about employees rights and labor laws. The most obvious signs would include use of words associated with unions or unionled movements like living wage or steward. Early on, amazon took a position to basicay be antiunion. Why was that decision made . I dont think we made the decision to be antiion. We just feel that all of the things thatthat unions wouldwould want totoet us to do, weve already done. Whatwhat abo setting rate, though . Do you not see that theres a little bit more leverage in the hands of management in this enario than there would be in a unionized environment . I dont know, its hard to speculate on that, butbut i do think that we have the obligation to set rates that are, again, going to encourage people to seek the jobs and deliver for customers, you knoww whve promised. What would you say to someone, though, whos, whos worked inin your Fulfillment Centers that feels as though are increasingly being treatedns like robots . cause its something that wevc ally heard, and i dont sense its hyperbole. Well, thats not the experience thatthat i had in setting it up or that ive seen. Thatthat these jobs are not for everybody, and therethere mayeo bee that dont want to do this kind of work. Narrato amazon executives also stress the company has become an Industry Leader in trainingts workforce for career advancement. We Just Announced a plee recently to spend 700 million to upskill, which is basically creating career opportunitiespe fole, 100,000 of our employees. We pay 95 of tuition to go toto college to get a skill that isnt about amazon, thatsu creating options for the employees, and i would expect those people to take advantagefo of that, worus for a couple of years and then go do something that they woulmuch rather do, and thats okay. There will be people th will hear what yall are saying, and theyll say, well, you signed up for physical labor, a job is a job, there were benefits, and they are now investing 700 million to do retraining for other types of jobs. Whats the real grievance . What is there to complain about . I actuallused to think that way for a while whenever i, when i first started, whoever i heard complaints fro i was like, well, it was in the job description, and you signed up for it. Is the safety rules that youut have to ignore to make rate. Its not just you go in, okay, thats it. U do your jo so, youre in, youre in a weird bind. Its incredibly hard to mt rate while following all thety sarocedures. Weve heard from w in terms of the sort of automation of their work as humans, some of them telling us that, yes, there are high Safety Standards in these fulflment centers, but that in order to make rate, theyre having to cheat the standard a little bit. Well, i would say thats not okay. So i, from the moment that i arrived 20 years ago, i made it very clear to our operations teams that we will not compromise theafety of our employees to do anything else. So, we have, we ha a culture that ifif we are asking people to do something that is, that they have to do too fast to be safe, they can raise their handa an this isnt right, andand well fix it. phone vibrates narrator for years, amazonha put a happy face on its business a its workforce. give a little bit by supertramp plang give a little bitt give a little your love. Even in amazons commercials, the people are almost likeow s and silhouettes. A it about boxes, and theres just like happy boxes singing and bumbling their way to your door, like, no, no. Theres so much that we need. Hello. Hey. They dont wa you to evenho think abouthey do this. They just want you to be wowed and, oh, howd th, howd this get here . My love to you. Little bit of they wanted people to just think, whoa, magic narrator and mag was a big part of bezos marketing strategy, with an emphasis on the companys miraculous level of innovation and growth. We started amazon prime in 2005, but en something very extraordinary happened. This. In 2011, the slope of that graph changed a lot. Narrator as amazon grew, he want his top executives to think about e kind of company it was becoming. He wrote a memo titled, amazon. Love. Copy of it was obtained by brad stone. The memo is another examplein of jeff very prescient about the future. Its jeff grappling with the idea that t all Big Companies are loved. That there is something that we get uncomfortable with when we ta about very big companie rudeness is not cool. Defeating ti guys is not cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool. Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Inventg is coo explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool. Some businesses, you can tell when yogo in and have meetings with them, they have a and theres a big difference between being a conqueror d being an explorer. D think in, yoknow, this very inventive space that were in, it pays to explore. Narrator but to some watching amazons growth, the company was falling ort of that ideal, and taking steps to make sure nothing got in its way. In 2013, amazon was moving to create its own Delivery System and made a key decision rather than hire its own drivers, it built a neork of independent businesses to deliver paages. They werent just going to dabble here and dabble there. They were going to go and create a system that would rival fedex or ups. Narrator propublica reporter patricia callahan, in conjunction with buzzfeed, has investigated the system amazon seup. They figured out a way to get around regulation. The cargo vans they choose are big enough to stuff withhu theyre small enough that, but theyre not regulated by the federal government an 84yearold woman struck and killed by an amazon delivery truck. A woman hit and killed in a parking lot. Narrator propublica and buzzfeed found that drivers are under intense pressure to deliver packages. After striking him, the van maneuvered around salinas and his dog. Narrator and they documented more than 60 crashes, including 13 deaths, since 2015. An infant critically injured in a car crash has died. When it came time to figuret os responsible, amazon would always say, its a contractor, its not our responsibility. Now youve been able to find 13 deaths. And thats over the course of several years. That statistically significant given all of the packages that they deliver inor any dany given year . I dont pretend to claim that theres only 13 deaths ande that i found single one. I just found enough to show that this is happening around the country. U wi, theres a record. Theres a federal record you ca look at ny serious injury and fatal accidents they have. With amazon, that doesnt ext. No one knows the Safety Records ntof all of amazons ctors. Narrator amazon disputed the propublica report. It would not release any data on crashes involving its Driver Network but to us it had a better than average Safety Record and that nothing is more important to them than safety. Any accident is one accident too many, so just as we were focused on safy in the Fulfillment Centers and product safety, we are. We set very high standards with l of those partners for safe performance. We have aining videos for the third parties that work with us to help themnderstand what we expect in terms of the drivewe have Mapping Software that we routes. Help them find the right every one of our drivers is required, including the third rties, are required to have comprehensive insurance, cluding liability insurance, so that if there is an accident that the person whos injured is covered. Amazon wants to get prime members their packages even faster. N narratothe last year, amazon announced a change to the way it handles prime deliveries. Instead of delivering packages t days, they promised to don it ione. D free nextdivery all across the u. S. Its impossible for me to imagine a world 20 years from now where a customer comes up ov me and says, jeff, i l amazon. I just wish your prices were a little higher. , i love amazon. I just wish you delivered a little more slowly. Narrator at the same time the deliry network was being set up, amazon was also rapidly expanding its product offerings, inviting more sellers on the site. computer plays tune including those from china. It basically makes it to where its supereasy for these companies, who are maybe not as careful with adhering to the law, where theyre able to just start a business up on amazon, import some stuff, sell it, cause some problems, and then dispear. Narrator rachel greer worked in proct safety at amazon, and worried that the site was being potentially unSafe Products. Are there proper warnings . Harit been safetytested fo durability . If a child chews on it, will the paint come off is that paint leaded . Most people would assume that theres a pretty high safy standard on amazon. And that assumption would be incorrect. Narrator she says thats, because amazke other tech companies, takes the position that its not legally responsible if its customersre harmed by products sold by third parties on the site. If someone buys something that cses harm at waart or walmart or target. Mer can sue right, cause no ones forcing you, when you come into walmart, to enter the doors of walmart. They arent making you sign away your rights. B when do you sign that when you go on amazon. Com . When you make your account. When you accept the terms and conditions. Challenging amazonms and been conditions in court. Some have even been successful. Ultimately, whos on the hook when a customer buys a daerous product on amazon . Who takes ultimate responsibility for that . Well, in the rare case where that, where Something Like thata ens, if its a thirdparty thirdparty sellerit isa the sellers responsibility to, to sell a legitima product to a customer, and then, when amazon is the retailer, and we sell a product to the, to a customer, then its our obligation to makeure that we understand the manufacturer and the supply chain for that product and its, and its safety. But when the other sellers are selling in youre, stoure not responsible for it ultimately, if theyre selling your customer a defectivor dangerous product . I think the way things work in the u. S. Is that the seller of record is the person who isic setting the and who is purchasing the product, and for things not sold by amazon and it says on the detail page, itll tell you who the seller is its the sellers responsibility for tse things, and for us, its very clear. It says amazon. Com whenever we sell i do you audit your sellers in terms of whether theyre actually providing Safe Products to your customers . We do. You know, some of our sales. P about, almost 60 of our sales are by thities, and those sales, some of themco directly from the trd party, so were not involved at all. But you take a cut. I mean, its on yo infrastructure, it goes through amazon. Com, so, i mean. Well, its on our infrastructure in terms of the website and payments, but were not. , and fees thu know, youre taking a cut of the sale, right . Sure, sur and were providing, you know, traffic that, that. You know, its kind of theay they think about marketing is why they would pay that fee, its harder to, before an experience, inspect that, that product. A South Carolina woman who bought a hair dryer onmazonen said this ha. Fire is coming out of the hair dryer. Arrator amazons approach has had consequences. A hoverboard caused a fire that destroyed their home. Narrator angerous products were flagged by authorities in washington state. Found dozens of School Supplies that had high levels of toxic mals. Narrator and a recent report found thousands of banned, unsafe, or mlabeled products. Im having a hard time understanding something, which is that, that. Anu know, amazons entire is about the customer, right . Yes. That its. Oh, i reminded them of this over and over again. You reminded them of what . I said that no customern wants to buysafe product. No customer wants selection that harms their child. S no customer wa buy something that burns down their house because it looks cool and its the latest, coolest thing. Sitting here today, are you able to basically say that the products that you sell on amazon. Com are safe . What i can say is, we work really hard to make sure that theyre safe. We have. Weve spent 400 million in the last year on systems that seek out things that are not safe, and, you know, there are millions of sellers and hundreds of millions of products, and our job is to, as fast as we can, weeout the ones that dont belong oour site. Were going to have to be vigilant as a retailer and aa technology company, and were definitely dedicated to, to protecting the safety of our customers. Narrator we heard that concern for the customer overov an in our interviews with amazon executives. Customer trust in a company like amazon, its sort of foundational. Customer obsession is the First Leadership principle, and itn. Its not a corporate slo we try to stay really focused onustomers. Very focused on, on delivering results for our customers. P viding a Great Customer experience that customers want. Customer delight. T, that narrator this commitment to the customer, and to keeping prices low, had anothebenefit it helped them avoid running afoul of regulators who enforces the natintitrust laws. Its important to understand sort of that theres two fundamental philosophies of y antitrust, of antimonopw. You know, theres the you, you want to break up allich potential concentrations of power that you can. But for the last 30 years, theres been this change in how we do antitrust. And this is the idea that the only purpose of antitrust ould be to drive prices lower, to serve the interest of e consumer. Narrator lynn had been urging regulators to take a more traditional approach a examine whether the company was gaining market power in exploitative way stifling fair competition, but keeping prices low for consumers. We live in a society of consumers, though, an seemingly there is some net benefit to all of us when prices are low. So, whats wrong with that view of things . Its obviously good for people to. For all people if we can drive down ices, if we have lowerpriced drugs, if we have books that anybody could buy. Thats a good thing. Its a good thing for soety, ansits a good thing for us consumers. But were not only consumers, were also producers. Were also people who think and who make things and ow things, and we want to havess aco open markets. Thearrator once agai tension was most pronounce with Book Publishers. Li amazon was s around 40 of all new books in america and twothirds of all electronic books, thanks to the success of the kindle. Then, one of the Worlds Largest publishers, hachette, decided to push back. Franklin foer was one of its authors. Hachette and amazon set out to renegotiate theirk contract. And hachette said, no, we dont accept the terms of your contract. And amazon basically said, to hell with you, hachette. Were going to stop delivering your books. If somebody searches for a hachette title, were going to redirect them to another publisher. Amazons battle with hachette and the authors that hachette publishes is heating up. Narrator as bezoss virtual blockade dragged on for months. A bitter, sevenmonth standoff. Narrator thousands ofau ors, including bestsellers like douglas preston, were caug in the middle. Some authors were losing 50 to 90 of their sales from amazon. It was absolutely devastating to firsttime authors. It actually destroyed their careers. Did you see your sales plummet . I did, yes. I saw my sales plummet tremendously. Narrator in frustration,to prpenned an open letter on behalf of all authors. It was published in the New York Times with more than 900 signatures. We authors have loved amazon. We have enthusiastically supported it, and this is howre they t us . This is not right. Mazon has been accused o doing everything from raising prices to deliberately delaying shipments. Is this what happens when jeff bezos decides to flex his muscles . Narrator while he and amazon were at an impasse, and other authors went to foer, washington, and asked the obama administrati to open an investigation. I went to the Justice Department and i went to the federal trade commissi with the authors guild, and we tried to explain to them why this power was so dangerous. We pointed it out of all then waysich amazon was bullying the Publishing Industry. The department of justice listened to us. And their answer was essentially this amazon is one of the most Popular Companies in the country. camera clicks they have brought tremendous services to consumers, and theyve brought lower prices. And that we hadnt given them any kind of reason to open an antitrust investigation. Narrator eventually, hachette and amazowould settle their dispute, with amazon allowing hachette to setc its own for ebooks, but offering it incentives to keep them low. Its great to be he amazon. crowd cheering narrator azon would thrive during the obama years, and eventually account for nearly 40 of all online commerce in the country. Last year, during the busiest day the christmas rush, customers around the world ordered mo than 300 items from amazon every second. Narrator but the complaints about its tactics would continue, with retailers of all kinds concerned that amazon had become the onlineshopping gatekeeper. Youve got to be on amazon. You have to be there, because thats where eveone is that. 100 million prime subscribers. They are the de factecommerce channel in the United States period, end of list. Amazon executives have told us that there are many other options out there. There is walmart, there is alibaba. As a seller, youve got options. Ive heard that re from amazon executives before, and w did that, we wsted, we listed all of our products on every other online marketplace. But its testament to just all of the others that were nonamazon combined did about n percent of what we were doing on amazon. Narrator businesses big and small ha been accumulating complaints about amazons hold on them. , on amaze customer belongs to amazon it doesnt belong to the thirdpart seller. Youre basically renting the amazon customer. Narrator James Thomson used to recruit brands to come onto amazon and now advises them on how to do business with the company. I represent brands today that face a number of challengewith amazon. Narrator among those challenges, businesses say that amazon has access to theira, valuable dat which gives it an unfair advantage. Th also complain about increasingly higher fees to stay on the platform, and pressure tm usons warehouses and shipping services. E spoke to numerous namebrand companies, but nuld share its grievances on camera. My account was suspended. Narrator ome small businesspeople have been talking about their experiences good and bad online. When youre selling on amazon, youre playi in someone elses playground. Who gets placed where, whether or not your product shows up in the search results. They suspended my account without warning. These are all things that are governed by amazons. And if theres a dispute within that arena, ifou feel you are mistreated, you know, the judge and jury is azon. They dont care, theyll just kill your account like that or suspend it. There are all sorts of crazyu stories why people get their accounts shut down on amazon. And it could take a week, it could take months, it could bebe nevere youre back online again. Amazon has the upper hand das the ability toally take your business away from you at any given moment. Selling on amazon, take one. Narrator amazon said thirdparty sellers account for more than half of everything sold on the site. I sell minilongboard ateboards. I sell mineral water. This is what i do. Narrator and its ellersed to its success proactively contacting them when their accounts are at risk of suspension and offering an appls process to resolve disputes. You already have great products. Scale up. Narrator but in the eyes of some businesses, amazon has essentially become like the railroads the turn of the last century that controlled the flow of commerce across the country. Startelling today. Do you see yourself as being kind of like the rails for ecommerce, that sellers bring their goods to market on your rails, through your marketplace . I dont think of it that way, and heres why the, the vast majority of stuff thats. Well, all of the stuff thats sold is manufactured, right . So its manufactured, meaning there are brands and factories seat produce stuff and the it. Were one rcent of the retail sales in the world, about. Well, you are the biggest marketplace online, right . No, so, again, i, i dont. The idea that theres an online, distinct for brands to sell their stuff and distinct from physical, just doesnt make sense to me, and were far from rgest retailer. So, i, i describe this as, retad were competing against walmart and target and costco and carrefour and alibaba and tmall and all kinds of folks who are, are now selling both physical stores and online. Ad narrator in tion to pointing to other large retailers, inside the Company Employees have been schooled in how to talk about its size and power. When i worked at amazon, we had training specifically on the use of ter like monopoly. We were not allowed to use ake term like mshare. Amazon has whats known as Market Segment share. What is Market Segment . I dont know, but i know that the lawyers at amazon feel those terms are, are much safer th using terms like market share. So market share was something they were really y ncerned about. Clearly somebth the necessary Legal Training or pr training recognized that amazon was growinvery quickly, and when we were asked to use the term maet segment and Market Segment shar in essencits a polite way of saying, m not going to talk to you about how b we are. Narrator since leaving amazon 20 years ago, shel kaphan has been watching the company with increasing concern, and hes speaking about it for the first time. I think that th characterization of amazon as being a ruthless competitor is true, and under the flag of customer obsession, they can do a lot of this which might not be good for people who arent their customers. I know youre not a legal scholar, but are you basically concerned that amazon is a monopoly . Im, im concerned that it has that type of power. I think it, you know, whether you technically can call it a i monopoly or noont know. Narrator that question has contued to loom over amazon. I think that amazon is looking out, and the existential threat that they may face is going to be from government. Its whether or not in and intervene a, youo step have too much power. Narrator for years, bezos r has beenping up amazons profile in washingn. Amazon has been lobbying the f. A. To lift. Trying to cozy up to politicians, so that they will give him the biggest tax breaks around. Narrator spending millions r n lobbying. Amazon lobbied more Government Entities than any other tech company. Narrator and hiring as its spokesman the former White House Press secrary jay carney. Youve got an army of lobbyists, many of wve revolved in and out of government, including yourself. A wh you hoping to get for all that lobbying spend and all that infence . One of the things we discovered is, because of the visibility of our company, but also the range of businesses that we in, we need subjectmatter experts on food safety, on transportation, on drones, on privacy. And also, we can be a resource, an infortion provider to policymakers and regulators. Its not lobbying in thead ional sense, in terms of trying to persuade somebody to do something, its just answering questions and, and providing data and information. Narrator bezos himself would also become a presence in the thpital, and eventually bu largest private residence in town. Jeff bezos ner really showed much interest in politics, but as hes cemented himself in the city, hes started to acquire this physical presence. He bought a mansion, then developed it into a place that is explicitly designed to be bacial. It has a big llroom, i mean, it is designed to create a real presence for him in the nations capital, where he can hobnob with the people who make decisions. Narrator hed even bought the hometown newspaper. Jeff bezos sent a thunderbolt through the media world this. Week narrator spending a quarter of a billion dollars to rescue the struggling Washington Post. I dbelieve that democracy dies in darkness. Of the united statamericacity Washington Post. E the i got to say, you know, full credit to him, he hasnt intervened in any of the coverage of the paper. And hes invested in the paper. Every dollar of profit that the paper makes is plowed back into making it a better paper. Bezos allowed the post to hire, to restock its newsroom, he reversed what had been an atmosphere of sort of decline. Id say the Washington Post has really flourished under, under bezoss ownership. Lets cut this digital ribbon. Narrator at the time, critics saw a more cynical motive. Perhaps hes buying theon washingtost to buy some sort of protection. Precisely. This deal could give him more influence over politics. Nobody hangs out in shington, dc, just to go to the free museums. You buy a home in washington, you buy a newspaper inus washington, beit is the most influential city in the world, and you want to lay your hands that power. Narrator bos saw a Business Opportunity there, as well. The Obama Administration plaed to modernize the federal government by embracing cloud computin bezos had been quietly building a revolutionary Cloud Computing business. A he called zon web its basically Computing Power in the cloud, but really its amazons server farms arnd the world that give people access to the kind of Technology Services they need. Narrator to keep amazon running, bezos had developed an unprecedented digital infrastructure. He realized he could rent parts businesses, but also to the government. Our infrastructure is built to satisfy the Security Standards the most risksensitive organizations. Hes already got a huge edge over the other big competitorsin t. So he wants to take that lead and capture the u. S. Government. Narrator in 2013, he got a major boost when it was revealed that Amazon Web Services had designed a computing cloud for the c. I. A. Amazon web services was awarded a tenyear contract for 600 million. Amazon is helping the c. I. A. Network. Cure Cloud Computer the c. I. A. Contract was probably one of the best things that happened to amazons cloud business. It lifted all doubts about the security of the cloud and on whether you could trust amazon p with your mocious data. The message to the world is, if thc. I. A. Trusts amazon with its data, then maybe other companies and government instutions can, as wel narrator and they d. Experience it with expedia. Narrator a. W. S. Became by cloudcomputing platform. On cbs. Narrator today, more than a million businesses, as well as pbs, pay amazon to store and manage their data. Narrator bezos had again anticipated the next frontier in technology, and had made himself indispensable to it. What jeff bezos is after is really creating a company that is the infrastructure, that owns the infrastructure for how commerce is done. And thats an incredibly powerful place to be. We pleasome chief executive officer of amazon web servic andy jassy. Narrator andy jassy created and runs a. W. S. He credits the service with making it easier to do business and sparking innovation throughout the economy. Look at what a. W. S. Has enabled with regard to change in o society. Look at, netflix changed the way that we consume digital content, and airbnb changed the way that we get accommodations, andola and grab and lyft and uber changethe way that we get transportation. A. W. S. Has enabled, has been a part of enabling all these huge innovations and changes in Consumer Experiences that have, have made life better for people. And were the cloud with the most capabilities, the mostin narrator the disionomers. Generated 35 billion in sales last year. Amazon web services. Yes build on. Narrator the success of a. W. S. Gave bezos billions to expand amazon from a company that sls everything to a company that does everything. A top priority. To boldly go where no man has gone before. Narrator . Was to create the sci future hed fallen in c love with asld. Gentlemen, this computer has an auditory se it can, in effect, hear sounds. Narrator a world ofti cial intelligence, in which computers can think and make decisions forumans and about humans. Jefbezos is a big fan of star trek. He, he admits that that was on his brain when he came up with the idea that amazon should bers ng a little disk that you can bark commands into. Stop. This is his beam me up, scotty fantasy alized. We started working on this device. And our, our vision was, in the tlong term, it would beco star trek computer. When it first arrived from tazon, i didnt know what was. Narrator in 2014, bezoss echo, hit the market. S mazon iit for me . Its for everyone. Narrator the voice known as alexa would emd amazon deeper into the lives of millions o people. Alexa, what do you do . I can play music, answer quesons, get the news and weather. Assistant, and just that term implies this intimate connection that we then begin to develop with amazon. Lexa, sing the abc song. A, b, c, d, e, f. I believe that when we think about the future and the future with Artificial Intelligence, given where we currently areso today, alexa i ways represents the moment that it ncomes seamlessly interwo with our lives. Alexa, how many teaoons are in a tablespoon . One tablespoon equals three teaspoons. Oh, okay. And the problem is that wes forget that here. Alexa, lights on. Okay. Narrator but alexa is also listening and shes learning. Im answering questions and learning more. Narrator and that helps amazon in the race to dominate i artificielligence. Alexa. Every time you ask alexa something, youre making the alexa algorithm better. Its one of the reasons why amazon, having had a head start, is able kind of preserve that head start, because theyve got the most data of anyone. Alexa is one more way for amazon to gather extremely valuable data. And this Data Collection is extremely important to this business model. Its extreme hard too, and, you know, convincing people to just deploy Something Like this in their home is a biant trick. Narrator dave limps amazons head of devices. How is it that youd convinns of millions of people to put what is essentiay a, a listening device in their homes . Well, i, i would first disagree with the premise. It doesnt, its not a listening device. The, the device in its core is. It has a detector on it. We call it internally a and that detector is listening not really listening its detecting o thing and one thing only, which is the word youve said that you want to get the attention of that echo. Narrator once the device is awake and the blue light is on, its recording. And last year, it was revealed th amazon employs thousands of people around the world to listen and transcribe some ofin those reco to help train the system. Do you think that you did a go enough job of disclosing that to consumers . Th, that there are humans involved in listening to these recordin . We, we try to articulate whao were doing wi products as clearly as we can. But if i could go back in time, and i could be more clear, and the team could be more clear, on how we were using human beings to annote a small percentage of the data, i would, for sure. What i would say, though, is that once we realized that customers didnt clearly understand this, and within a couple of days, we added an optout ature, so that customers could turn off annotation if th, if they so chose. And thenithia month or two later, we allowed people to autodelete data, which they also asked for within at, within that time frame. You know, were not going to always be perfect, but when weis makekes, i think the key is that we correct them very quickly on behalf of customers. Narrator but even one of the founders of Amazon Web Services approaches his alexa devices with caution. When do you turn off your alexa . N i tf my alexa when i know for a fact that the conversation that i am going to have, or, or whenever i just want to have a private moment. I dont want certain coersations to be hed by humans, conversations that i know for a fact are not things that should not be shared, then i actually turn off those particular listening devices. We have had an incredible year. Behalf of customer id a lot on cannot wait to show you what we have. To nar so far, limp and his team have made alexa compatible with more than 100,000 products. A echo frames allow you to get done more around be more present in the everyday. Ow theyre going to know more about you than anyone knows. Theyre trying to move as intimately as possible and as quietly as possible into everyday lif echo loop is a smart ring, packed with ways to sttop of your day. Amazon wants to have the entire environment essentially miked. Alexa, start my running playlist. They want your walk in the park, they want your run down the city street. Nationwides teamed up with amazon to ing you the allnew echo auto. Car, they want whau do inin your your home. Amazon smart oven. Alexa, ke for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. oven beeps ll these intimacies, all this insight is being integrated, analyzed and integrated. Alexa, alarm off. That is an extraordinary kind of power that has never before existed. Narrator afterlexa, amazon would go on to spend nearly a billion dollars to buy ring. Hey, bud, the police are on the way. Narrator a doorbell camera and app thatmazon describes as the new neighborhood watch. H , get away get out of there narrator to promote it, amazon has enlisted the help of hundreds of cal Police Departments. Its a phenomenal tool assist dectives. Themrrator they gi access to a portal to request footage and have given free cameras to hd out and talking points. This system is so simple to use. You have amazon in partnership with polic departments, who have basicallyn policemen into, like, avon salespeople for amazon ring. E they havgiven police departnts talking points and marketing materials to encourage e installation of ring by community residents. None of this was public knowledge. And this is rings first indoor cam. It is. Cute, is what i would say. Narrator amazon has continued to expand the scope of ring. Last fall, dave limp unveiled a version designed to monitor e inside of peoples homes. Within weeks, hackers discovered a way to terrorizeing customers. Did you see that video . I did see that video. What did you think of i think that tha industry problem. Its not just about the, a ringa ca it could be about anybodys cameras. Its about any device in that. ve already investigated that one to make sure what, what the root cause was. What we want to be able to do in those cases is, we want to minimize them. Wed like to dett them. And we also want to build tools that give them the ability so that doesnt. That, that makes it harder for those kinds of attacks to happen. Theres a lot of bad people in this world. Heres a devi that you had described as cute and seems harmless, and im just wondering whether youre being straight with people about the attendant risks to your customers that you are obsessed with, supposedly. Well, its t supposedly, we are obsessed with customers. I, i would say that we are trying to build security stack operating systems,f the authentication, fraud detection. We offer things that customers can turn on that make it even, attacks to happen. R for those yo, whats up, hows your day . Who is that . Whats goinon, buddy . What are you watching . Narrator there were a series of similar attacks across the country. Whats up, homie . I still see you. You hungry . Whats going on, n man shaq . Narrator and its not just hackers. Ring has fired some of its own employees for spying on customers. Ge in gerwells 1984, he describes a dystopia in which, you had to live, you did live from habit that became intinct in the assumption t every sound you made was overheard. And wonder if you ever think about how easily this could become dystopian to some degree ell, i dont want to live in that world. So, i do not want to invent the technology that, or have myhe teams inventechnology that would create that world. And so. But i am an optimist. I, i think if you take the, the absolute view of that, we wouldnt invent anything. Living in a world in which your products and your designs are there. Do, can you see how it could be concerning in some ways that we all cant opt out of that world this point . Oh, sure, i can see why it could be concerning to somecu omers. Our job in building that technology is to build it in such a way that it, that it takes into account for thear scs that you just talked about, as best as we possibly can. You know, the, the reality of it is, that world happened way before ring or alexa. Narrator thats something that bezos himself wrestled with 20 years ago i believe that privacy is going to be one of the prominent issues of the 21st century. The thing is, there are towns now in thenited states that have installed security cameras on every corner, and their crime rates decreased by 80 ,ou but do yeally want cameras on every corner . There are very strange things that are going to haen over the next 100 years with respect to technology that are going to challenge us as a society to figure out how we want to deal with privacy. Narrator decades later, bezos would be at the vanguardof xpanding the use of that kind of technology. Ro icing amazon rekognition video. Rekognition allows you to pass an image to us. You can say, do these two faces match . Which is incredibly useful for applications in the security space. You can imagine. Out a facial recognition tool, it marketed it to Law Enforcement. A recognind track persons of interest from a collection of tens of millions of faces. Narrator police weve spoken to say its a valuable too identify suspects quickly. Appears to be a match, b im gonna make sure i look at them all. Narrator and whi amazon has offered guidelines for how it should be used, there are few thws governing the use of technology. It returns anybody withlo warrants tha like her. Narrator Civil Liberties advocates have raised concerns, as have computer scientists, who worry amazon has released the software before its ready, and that police are essentiallyin fieldteit on the public on behalf of the company. Oo the are not what i call battletested. And we still do not understand how well they work in the environments in which theyll be applie narrator anima anandkumar was the principal scientist for Artificial Intelligence aton am in her first interview about her concerns she told us she was particularly alarmed by an m. I. T. Study that found thene software pro to mistakes with darkerskinned faces amazon has questioned theth studys ology. As a researcher in a. I. , i feel its my personal responsibility to educate the public of where a. I. Truly i today, right . Because they hear h of a. I. Being hyped up, you know, its suppod to be magical, its supposed to solve all the worlds problems. I see the potential in doing that, but at the same time we need a reality cck. We need to ask, where is a. I. Today . What can it truly do well . And when it comes to facial recogtion, you dont think its ready for primetime. I dont think face primetime in challenging applications like law enforcemen narrator anandkumar and other scientists have asked amazon to st selling rekognition to Law Enforcement accuracy is still in question, and there are no clear regulations about how its used. We asked andy jassy about it. I have a different view, and weve spent. Weve had the facial Recognition Technology out for use for over twoandahalf years now. Wo and in thosendahalf years, weve never had any reported misuse of lawg enforcement use facial Recognition Technology and, you know, i think a lot of societal good is already beg done with facial Recognition Technology. Already, youve seen hundreds of missing kids reunited with their parents, and hundreds of humanin traffivictims saved, and all kinds of security and identity and education uses, so theres a lot of good thats been done with it. T i also understand that it could be misused. And i think at the end of the y with anyechnology, whether youre talking about facial Recognition Technology or thanything else, the peopl use the technology have to be responsible for it, and if theyr use itponsibly, they have to be held accountable. Theres been all sorts of problems with policing in this country. W allowolice departments to experiment . We believe that governments and the organizations that are arged with keeping our communities safe have to have access to the most sophisticated, modern technology that exists. We dont have a large number of Police Departments that are iing our facial Recognition Technology, and aid, weve never received any complaints of misuse. Om lets see ifow they abuse the technology. They havent done that, and to assume that theyre go it and therefore you shouldnt allow them to have access to thp moststicated technology out there, doesnt feel like the right balance to me. Its been difficult to even know how many Police Departments are using the facial Recognition Technology, d theres no public auditing to know whether there are complaints about abuse. Th how woulpublic ever know . You know, again, i dont think we know the total number of Police Departments that are using faci Recognition Technology. I mean, theres, you can use any number we have 165ervices in our technology infrastructurepl form, and you can use them in whatever conjunction, any combination that you want. We know of some, and the vast majority of those that are using it are using it according to the guidance that weve prescribed. And when theyre not, we have that theyre using somee find irresponsible way, we wont allow them to use the servicee and atform. Y and jeffr andy ja bezos have said they want governments to hurry up and regulate how Law Enforcement can use facial recognition. But in the meantime, amazon has forged ahead, and has even discussed its services with immigration and customs enforcement. At amazon webervices. Narrator and the u. Military. Partner community to deliver for our warfighters and defensleaders for when it matters most. Narrator bezos himself has made it clear that he sees amazon playing a Critical Role in national serity, as well as in commerce. We are going to continue to support the d. O. D. , and i think we should. And if Big Tech Companies are gonna turn their back on the u. S. Department of defense, this country is gonna be in trouble. Narrator as amazon has revolutionized one industry ter another, jeff bezos reputation has grown to mythic proportions. Youve called what jeff bezos has built a miracle. Absolute miracle. I wish i could give him a blood test or something so i could pick it out, but. You want to clone him . No, i want a transf actually. Amazon is now worth 1 illion. Narrator his every move moves the markets. Amazon advertising is just on fire. Narrator starting a digital facebook and google. To rival some breaking news on whole foods. Holy cow. Jim, i heard you gasp just now. Holy cow, this is such a gamechanger. Narrator buying the grocery ain whole foods. In a recordbreaking deal i amazonbuying whole foods for 13. 7 llion. The day the acquisition was announced, the nationlargest grery company lost billions of dollars because amazon acquired a company one12th the se. Everybody thinks s is the smartest person in the world and hes gonna come and crush me. L when amazon announced the acquisition of pck. News of the deal sent shockwaves through an industry. The Retail Pharmacy sector shed billions of dollars. Eook at this story thre titans of industry. When amazon was mentioned in a press release with Berkshire Hathaway and jp morgan saying they were looking at healthcare costs no detl in what that meant. Healthcare companies are panicked about amazons forthcoming entry into the bealthcare market. On the openin the next morning, the healthcare industrys largest players shed billions of dollars. And insurance stocks are down after amazon announced a Healthcare Partnership withrk ire hathaway and jp morgan chase. Bezos basically wants to own the whole economy, right . Wi you think h. I kind of think he will. I kinda think that in, like, ten years ff bezos owns every single thing there is. So amazon has these darth vaderlike abilities tjust look at a sector and begin choking it of oxygen withouten ouching it. Amazon can begin beating competitors without even competing. You actually think that amazon is having a negative effect on competition in the innovation economy right now . I think its a mixed bag, i think that you could argue, and theres evidence that they have inspired innovation in certain sectors. But i think theres a lot of Small Companies that arent being formed, because if you go in to try and raise money r an ecommerce company, its, well, how are we going to compete against amazon . And i say, well, the answer can be summarized in one word impossible. All right, lets move some earth. Every single area that he enters into, he mages to succeed in a fairly major way. crowd cheering weve had another great prime day. Weve never seen anything like a company that is so integrated into the faf existence, so, you know, at a unavoidable. T, it bemes amazon just yesterday said. Bezos would even extend his reach into the heart of popular culture. Can you imagine macys starting a media compa . We couldnt even imagine that. But amazon does it, and people take it seriously. explosionchoes people screaming narrator amazon esting billions in new shows and movies. Oh. Hi. Hey. Narrator and on being up its streaming service, which streams around four times as many movies as netflix, major narrator and on beefing up its streaming service, which streams four times as many movies as netflixmajor league baseball, and pbs showson like thi audience applauding and the golden globe goes to. Transparent. Amazon instant video. I want to thank amazon, jeff bezos. To amazon, my new best. Friend. audience laughing bezos likes to joke aboutve how, time he wins a golden globe. It helps us sell more shoes. And it does that in a very direct way, because whenou people. Ifook at prime members, they, they buy more on amazon than nonpre members, and one of the reasons they do annual fee, theyring paid their around to see, how can i get more value out of the program . T theying to use this entertainment to get people into the pipeline. Alexa, play jack ryan on fire tv. To keep them sitting within this structure that is amazon, where it becomes this unthinking habit thatstarting to pattern all these parts of our existence. So youre doing the media stuff to encourage people to use more of prime. Correct. Amazon is repsented at the academy awards. Amazon is the first streamingic senominated for best picture. Hes like one of the old studio bosses right now. R lly enjoys having this place in the industry and really seems to relish being at the center of attention there. I also want you to know, jeff, if you win tonight, you can expect your oscar to arrive in two to five business days. audience laughing whayou see now is someone who is so supremely self confident. Uty who has beco a titan. Amazon is ao get bigger. Its looking for another home in north america. Narrator bezos and amazons n soaring stature would bell the Company Announced a contest to find a location for a second headquarters. Called hq2. Narrator they promised 5 billion in capital investments. 5 billion. In local investment. Narrator and 50,000 jobs. 50,000. 5000 people. 50,000 highpaying jobs. Cities are salivating over the opportuny. It was unprecedented because the number of jobs was headand shouers more than had ever been offered in a deal before. This was a superhighprofile auction by the most Popular Consumer company in the, in the country. Narrator he company invited a ties across north americto pitch themselves. How about, i dont know, here . Narrator 238 took them up on. I chose, miami you should, too. Cant wait to see you, amazon i, ebenezer scrooge. Narrator some with elaborately produced videos. I live in atlanta. Amazon is demonstrating tha it has the power to get thousands of elected officials to remake their workday and bow down before amazon. Im mark bound, mayor of the city of danbury. And offer it huge tax breaks. Georgia offered billion. Maryland offered 5 billion. 7 billion from new jery. Huge infrastructure promises, huge prime parcels of land. Philadelphia is offering the most land 28 million square feet. They know that these places all dont have a prayer. So to those who saw it as a kindf grotesque display of corporate power, to dangle 50,000 jobs and potential billions of dollars of revenue over metropolitan cities around the country, you say what . Look, i, i think, i used to work for the United States government, like, we want businesses to invest in the United States. States want businesses to invest in states, cities, city officials want businesses invest in cities. The proposals we got, the cities made the proposals, they wanted us to come, and they presented to uwhy they were an attractive option. Narrator in november 2018, amazon announced there were two winnrlington, virginia, and neyork cit this is by far the biggest new jobs deal in the history of new york city, the history of new york state. Narrator new yk city and state had campaigned hard for it, offering up nearly 3 billion in subsidies and tax eaks. Ill change my name to aman cuomo if thats what it takes. Narrator in return, amazon promised 25,000 jobs, billions of dollars in capital investments, and amall number of projects earmarked for local community meers. I thought it could be a greao thing for ne. We are more and more of a tech center, we wanted to consolidate that reality having amazon here would have helped immensely. Amazon has got to go narrator but not every was enthused about giving billions in tax breaks to a trilliondollar corporation. Corporate handout et out alexandria ocasiocortez says the tax break isnt worth it. gavel pounding welcome to todays oversight hearing on the deal. Narrator though the deal had already been finalized, the new public hearing. Il insisted on a it quickly turned contentious. Mr. Husman, you mention that there are 5,000 employees that are currently working herew inork city for amazon, is that correct . Yes. Narrator Council Members grilled amazon executives onn their positionions, and whether the company would pledge to remain neutral if workers in new york state tried to unionize. How my of those employees are unionized . None, sir. None. Would you be oy with agreeing to neutrality so that rkers can unionize . No, sir, we respect. You wouldnt agree to that. Correct, sir, we would not. To go to a city council hearing, as amazon did, and antagonize the city council if they wanted to start a fight,id they great job. If they wanted to actually show that they wereilling to work with this community and our values, they did a horrible job. You are in union city. And one of the firstrs to your question today, is would you be neutral . You said no. That is not a way to come to our city. Narrator it was not the reaction the Company Expected when it launched the contest. Two weeks later, amazon pulled out. Lu amazon is pulling theon we decided we dhave to be there in that political dynamic. The fact of the matter is, when it turd out the governor and the mayor supporting something turned out not to be enough to persuade other critics that it was the right kind of investment for new york to make, we decided, thats fine, we can go elsewhere. H said to us that it turned out that the governor and the mayor supporting something wasnt enough to persuade other critics that it was the right ykind of investment for nk to make. So we decided. We decided its fine, welgo elsewhere. Thats an idiotic statement on its face. That is pure idiocy from auy who should know a hell of a lot better. E, the deal was dmazon knew it was done. There was noise, there was posturing by people in the political world, but the deal was ne, so all were talking about here is the background noise. In what world are there no critics . Well, yeah, in an autocratic totalitarian world, maybe theyre not allowed, abe thats the world that jeff bezos somewhere in his mind thinks he is entitled to. Narrator at the time, bezos was involved isome personal turmoil. Amazon c. E. O. Jeff bezos o and his wi25 years announcing they are splitting. The announcement coming amid tabloid reports that bezos is now a relationship with former news anchor lauren sanchez. Narrator he National Enquirer had been pursuing him for months. The tabloid claims it tracked him across five stat and over 40,000 miles. Narrator bezos saw the enquirers report as politically motivated. So what would be the motive here of getting that embarrassing material about bezos and his alleged affair to the National Enquirer . Who would want to get the dirt in the press . Narrator the magazines owner, david pecker, was linked to t powerful men who disliked how they were covered by bezoss Washington Post. The first was President Trump. Its put there for the benefit of the washington o postamazon. Narrator the second Saudi Crown Prince mohammad bin salman, who the c. I. A. Had tied to the murder of one of the posts journalists, jamal khashoggi. Former c. I. A. Dector john brennan said, i have no doubt that saudi arabia would want to embarrass jeff bezos and hurt him financially. Narrator david pecker demanded that bezos publicly declare the enquirers coverage was not politicallyte motior hed publishto intimate phos of him. Breaking news tonight, a stunner from the richest man in the wod. Narrator rather than give in, bezos fought back. Jeff bezos calling out the publisher of the national enirer, david pecker. Bezos published a personal account accusing the National Enquirer of blackmail, of extoion. He turned the situation around and handled it so transparent, he was veryy courageous, admitted some very embarrassing things about himself, didnt try to deny it and positioned the other ndindividual as the bully, kicked the bully in the nuts, and somehow turned this into a net positive. I mean, this really was the pr strategy and execution of thees ive never seen anhing like this. Narrator publicly, bezos has pushed ahead undaunted a worldfamous celebrity. Divorce settlement, still the richest person on the planet. cheers and applause but the calls to rein in his mpany are growing louder. Amazon reported 10 billion in profits and paid zero in taxes. I will single out companies likealliburton or amazon tha pay nothing in taxes in our need to change that. Heres bezos achithis American Dream and success. D, nd hes now the target of, of all of this criticism. And basically, it becomes a symbol of all of his problems. Amazon is closing 30 of americas stores and mnd paying. Youre basically a pinata dangling in front of any politician with a populist message. Anyone who wants to talk aboutwe th inequality, theyre pointing their finger at you. Hr this is why people own more wealth than the bottom half. If they want to talk about problems with capitalism in neral, theyre pointing their finger at you. We need to enforce our, antitrust laeak up these giant companies. Arrator and its coming from all sides. President trump just sent a chill down the spine of jeff bezos. Nt the presigain teed off against amazon on twitter. Narrator President Trump has made bezoss ownership of the Washington Post a regular target. Washington post, bezos uses that as his lobbyist, okay . He kind of assumed that the Washington Post w operated in the so of way that he would operate a newspaper. And so he thought that bezos was dictating coverage to the post, which we should be i careful to snot the case. Narrator trump has also criticized amazo and accused the company of evading taxes. Last year, the compa competing for a 10 billion Cloud Computing contract with the department of defense. This contract would have solidified bezs dominance in Cloud Computing. This is a hugely important ing. Narrator but the company intervened to scuttle the deal. And were looking at it very seriously. Its a very big contract. One of the biggest ever given. A big win for microsoft, beating out amazon. Amazon can protest the outcome, especially given the unusual, unprecedented cments President Trump. Its an extraordiry times we live in that one of the worlds biggest corporations, amazon, is now saying, the president of the United States has corrupted our ability to win this contract. Is there any evidence of that . The evidence is what the president has publicly said. Narrator and amazons problems have continued to multiply. The federal trade commission is now reconsidering its stance on antitrust enforcement and is looking at amazon as are regulators in the e. U. Ke this gateep power and how the platforms are exercising it is of tremendous concern. Narrator in washington, democratic congressman David Cicilline s launched an antitrust investigation into allegations of abusiveonduct by amazon and the other tech giants. Given your experience, do you agree with amazons statements suggesti that it seeks to act in the best interest of independent sellers . I disagree with that. We get, i dot know, what i might call bullying with a smile. We were able to get several cc. E. Os. To come to a pub hearing. That required tremendous courage because theres a reential for economic retaliation for their sharing that. We dont havehe resources to fight amazon. We could use some help. In the course of your investigation thus far, andad youveeveral public hearings, have you seen any evidence of anticompetitive behavior by amazon . Um, we have seen evidence of anticompetitive behavior by all the large platforms as a result otheir market dominance. But it sort of doesnt fall on the companies to fix this problem. It falls on us. Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. Narrator cillis committee is considering everything from imposing limits on what businesses a company like amazon can engage in, to restricting the collection and use of data. The man who helped jeff bezos build amazon 25 years ago says it may be necessary to go even further. On on thhand, im proud of what it became, but it also scares me. And, um, i just feel like its important r someone in my situation to, you know, at least say what they think about whats going on. This is sort of in some ways a baby that you gave birth , right . And so, i mean, you helped birth azon. Um, yeah, very much so. In fact, i used to, um, you know, get up several times during the night to, just to see if it was working and. And, you know, take care of it if it wasnt, so. And when you look at what amazon has grown into today,ou see what . chuckles well, um. You know, you dont want to see your offspring, um, become, um, antisocial adults, right . So i think not all of the effects of the company on thear worlfor the best and, um. And, you know, i, i wish it werent so, and i. You know,. And ut i had something to do with bringing it into existence, so, its partly on me. And, i mean, isnt. Isnt this just capitalism . Isnt this just a company doing what a company does . Yes. Yes, it is, um, and i think theyre dog what the Business Schools teach people to do, and theyre dog it aggressively and skillfully and with great intelligence. And they will continue to do that unless theyrconstrained by other forces in society. There are proposs out there to break up amazon. Is that something youd promote, the idea of breaking theup . Um, i think that theyre now at the scale where that could potentially make sense. How do you and jeff and others at the seor leadership level think about the call to break you guys up . We dont think about it very, very deeply. Ee you know, iveat amazon now for 22andahalf years, and i always remember one of the first ings i heard jeff bezos say back when we could fit the whole company in just one Conference Room for an allhands meeting. At night fearing your go to d competitors or fearing any external issues. T i would bed at night fearing whether youre doing right by your customers. And that really is a credo that we live here and its what we spenmost of our time thinkin about. Well, i, i understand that were big, and that, that we deserve scrutiny, and i thinkha everythings. Thats large in the economy and in society should deserve scrutiny. The problem is, when you think about us, were in a lot of verticals, yes. Theres. Theres vid, and theres commerce, and theres, you know, theres web services therare all these things. But in every one of them, we have inten competition, and i do understand why, when youre in a lot of them, can seem like were everywhere, but the global. If we were everywhere, that global economy, no global the retail its so vast, were just, you know, were a speck. To the public, it may sound strangcoming from amazon, which is a company with basically a trilliondollar rket cap, your c. E. O. Is the richest man in the world, but jeff wilke said to me that youre kind of just a speck in the scheme of things. Do you see how that could seemgr strange or incus . You know, amazon as a whole has become, you know, has been successful, but simply because the companys been successful in a few different business segmen doesnt mean its somehow too big. Narrator as jeff bezoss company is coming under ever greater scrutiny for everything from how wields power to even its impact on the environment hes continuing to look beyond it all. We get to preserve this unique gem of a planet which isr completelylaceable. There is no plan b. We have to save this planet, and e shouldnt give up aut for our grandchildrens grandchildren of dynamism and growth. We can have both. Who is gonna do this work . rocket rumbling narrator hes spending all bin dollars a year of his personal fortune on a ace Exploration Company he created. And its this generationsto job uild that road to space, so that the future generations can unleash their creativity. Narrator for bezos, its always been about one thing his vision for the future. I want you tohink about this this vision sounds very big, and it is. None of this is easy, all of it is hard, but i want to inspire you, and so think about this. Big things start small. audience applauding thank you. audience cheers and applauds go to pbs. Org frontline for extended excerpts of our executives and insiders,on including employee number one. On one hand im proud of what it became, but it also scares me. M ae on amazons use of facial recognition software. I think a lot of societal good is already being done with facial Recognition Technology. Connect to the Frontline Community on facebook and twnter, and watch anytime o the pbs video app, or pbs. Org frontline. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs u. Ation from viewers like thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Bymajor support is providehe john d. And catherine t. To building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. Anby the ford fodation working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. Additional support is provided by the abrams foundation,co itted to excellence in journalism. The park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust. Supporting trustwonahy josm that informs and inspires. The heisingsimons foundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. T and frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagr. And Additional Support from Laura Debonis and scott nathan. Captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org for more on this and other froline programs, visit ou website at pbs. Org frontline. To order frontlines, amazon empire the rise and reign of jeff bezos, on dvd visishop pbs or call0 1aypbs. This program is also available on amazon primvideo. Youre watching pbs. Ert mueller has submitted his report. The truth is rarely black and white. Intelligence officials are e. Pected to be face to fac all we hear about. But if we ask the hard questions. Ssia witch hunt. Check the facts. We face a number im rtant issues around privacy. Dig a little deeper. Boom and take a breath. Thtruth is closer than you think. Weaving through the crowded streets of istanbul, amina gracefully follows aminata fall, a senegalese wan who migrates to tu build a better life. [ speaking french ] as she faces alienation in a foreign country and longs for her daughter back home, she pursues her dreams. Turkish director Kivilcim Akay colorfully documents the sounds, tastes, and intimate interactions