Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian Amazon is on a mission to own the infrastructure of our lives. The second-largest private employer in the United States after Walmart, the company captures $4 out of every $10 spent online. They have a vast network of fulfillment centers, and they are rapidly buying more real estate; in September 2020, they announced plans to open 1,500 more distribution hubs in suburbs across the country. Retail is only one of their many businesses, however: for many Americans, it would be impossible to commute from home to school or the office without passing into view of a Ring, Amazon’s “smart” home surveillance camera. Moreover, Amazon Web Services (AWS) controls nearly half of the public cloud market, and the company is pouring money into a number of other ventures, from entertainment to advertising. We talked with an AWS cybersecurity engineer about how to think about the behemoth and how it feels to work inside it.