Amazon today elected Keith Alexander, a retired four-star general of the U.S. Army, as it newest board director.
Alexander was previously director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service from 2005 to 2014. He also served as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command from 2010 to 2014, and is currently co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, a Maryland-based company he founded in 2014.
In a 2013 profile, Wired described Alexander as the “spy chief leading us into cyberwar.” Alexander led the NSA in 2013 when the leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden first came out.
“Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy,” the Wired story noted.
Alexander joins Amazon’s board as the tech giant continues a legal fight against the Department of Defense over its decision to award Microsoft with the $10 billion JEDI military cloud computing contract.
Alexander is Amazon’s 11th board director. He will also join the board’s Audit Committee. The company currently has six men and five women on the 11-member board.
In 2018, facing an employee backlash and public criticism from black and Hispanic members of Congress, Amazon adopted a new policy to consider “a slate of diverse candidates, including women and minorities” for future openings on its board. The company said at the time that it was merely formalizing its existing practice. Corporations are increasingly being called upon to increase board diversity. Amazon added two women of color to its board last year.
Amazon’s other board directors are CEO Jeff Bezos; Rosalind Brewer; Jamie Gorelick; Daniel Huttenlocher; Judith McGrath; Indra Nooyi; Jonathan Rubinstein; Thomas Ryder; Patricia Stonesifer; and Wendell Weeks.
