>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back, everyone, to Washington D.C. and theCUBE's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside John Furrier. We are joined by Jay Carney. He is the senior vice president global corporate affairs Amazon and AWS. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. >> You are just coming from a panel with Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, where the topic was regulation and tech. I want to hear what was talked about and what your thoughts were there. >> Sure, there were a lot of topics, including the HQ2, which as you know, we're locating in northern Virginia. Senator Warner has a very specific interest in that, and we talked about that a lot. One thing that he's involved in, he's the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the leading democrat on the committee, and he takes these issue very seriously. He's very focused on, especially social media, but tech in general and national security concerns, as well as issues around deep fake news and fake news and the like. Now, a lot of that isn't our territory as a business, but we think that where we do fall into scrutiny for regulation, we welcome the scrutiny. We're a big company, obviously, and we're very focused on serving our customers. Part of delivering for our customers means ensuring that we work with elected officials and regulators and pass that scrutiny well. We'll see what the future brings in different spaces. Our concern, or our hope in general, if it's around privacy or other areas of tech regulation, that uniformity is obviously preferable to having, say, 50 state laws, whether it's around facial recognition technology or broader privacy initiatives. Senator Warner's supportive of a federal legislation, as a lot of folks are both sides of the aisle. >> Jay one of the things that you guys live every day at Amazon, and following you guys for the past nine, ten years now for theCUBE, is you're willing to be misunderstood as a company to continue the long game. Jeff Bezos talked about the long game all the time. Doesn't look at stock prices, all those kind of quips, but the innovation engine has been very strong, and with digital transformation now at an all time high, new value is being created in new ways that some people don't understand. You guys are on a constant mission to educate. Here in D.C., what's clear to me is this awakening of this value proposition, and in some cases, it's not very good, the value. Weaponizing is a word we've heard. Big tech is kind of under a lot of conversations, but there's a lot of good things happening. You guys create a lot of value as a company-- >> Sure, and I think the industry at large creates a lot of value. I think we need to ensure, we, the American people, American citizenry, and on our behalf, those elected officials who ultimately make the decisions, that as we scrutinize and explore regulating some of these arenas, that we do it in a way that creates public benefit, that prevents, wherever possible, misuse of technology, but that continues to allow the kind of innovation that's made the United States the center of technological innovation over the last 30 or 40 years. That's not an easy job, but I think that folks in tech need to work with and collaborate with regulators and lawmakers to talk about how to do that because you wouldn't want, I mean, a good example, I think is technological innovation is value neutral, usually. It's a new service or a new product that can do something. It itself is just a product, so it doesn't have a conscience. It's self moral. How you use it is really what determines whether it's something that's good or bad. Many technologies can be used for good or for ill. We have a service at AWS, a facial recognition service. We're certainly not the only company that provides that service to customers. Thus far, since Amazon recognition has been around, we've had reports of thousands of positive uses, finding missing children, breaking up human sex trafficking, human trafficking rings, assisting law enforcement in positive ways. We haven't heard yet any cases of abuses by law enforcement, but we certainly understand that that potential exists, and we encourage regulators and lawmakers to look closely at that. We've put forth publicly guidelines that we think would be useful as they build a legislative, a regulatory framework. >> (mumbles) asking last night even was saying you guys are very open. He wasn't hiding behind any kind of stories. How do we talk to regulators? We want to embrace those conversations. He wasn't saying, "We want to be regulated." He didn't say that, but he wasn't hiding from the fact that these conversations we need to have. >> I think we understand that the potential misuse of some technology is real. We've seen it in other countries, for example, in ways that violate civil liberties. We want to make sure that in this democracy, that we have an infrastructure in place, a regulatory infrastructure, that continues to allow innovation to blossom but protects the civil liberties of people in the United States. We're a global company, but we started off, and we are an American company, and we care deeply about those issues as a company. >> I think that that's really the big question, is how would this regulatory process work? You're talking about having these conversations, particularly around unintended consequences of these new technologies and services. How would it work? Particularly, someone like you who was in government, now in the private sector, at what point are these conversations taking place, and how might it work? At the innovation stage? At the creation, you know what I mean? Just now that we're really getting into it. >> In some cases, there's real progress being made. On privacy for example, all of your viewers no GDPR in Europe was the first multinational comprehensive privacy regulation that's been implemented. In the United States, we don't have a federal law yet. California's taken steps, has passed a bill, and other states are looking at it. We think for U.S. competitiveness, one law is better than 50 laws. We think that we're fully compliant with GDPR, and it actually was not as complicated for us to meet the compliance requirements as it might've been for other tech companies because of the nature of our business in the European Union. There are aspects of GDPR that I think are unnecessarily bureaucratic or clunky, so there's ways to take that as a base and improve it so that the privacy concerns are rightfully addressed, but innovation continues at pace. >> How about antitrust? We had a conversation a couple years ago to reinvent around antitrust. You made a comment to me, we're faster, ship faster, lower cheaper price, lower prices, how are people harmed? There's been a lot of young academics who are challenging the old antitrust definition. Does digital recast itself in antitrust? This is a conversation that think tanks are starting to have now around what does that mean for the modern era, or modernizing government, including laws of regulation? Your thoughts on that. >> I'm not a lawyer. I'm careful to speak authoritatively where I don't know all the details. Consumer harm is the standard. For all the reasons that you described, our mission as a company is to reward the customer with more convenience, more selection, and lower prices. Certainly, we fulfill that mission and don't meet that standard when it comes to any way you might look at that competitively. Even more broadly, there's a misconception about Amazon. Because we're a consumer-facing business primarily, and because we are involved in a lot of different things, some more successfully than others, that we're perceived as bigger than we are. The fact is retail, our original business, our core business, is the biggest marketplace there is. In the United States, we're less than 4% of retail, and we're not even the biggest retailer in the United States. Cloud, AWS, we're here at the Public Sector Summit. >> You've got competition-- >> We have intense, high quality competition, and deep-pocketed competition. As you know, and your viewers know this, the cloud revolution is in its early stages. The opportunity there is enormous, and we're just getting started. There'll be plenty of winners in this space, so again, I don't see any way that you might look at it, that there would be competitive issues. Also, there's a perception that Amazon itself is singular, so that you buy from Amazon, therefore you're not buying from somebody else, but in fact, when we opened Marketplace, I think in 2001, we opened the website to other sellers. What used to be 100% Amazon product and inventory for sale on amazon.com, has now, 2019, risen to over 55% not being Amazon. Third-party sellers, small and medium sized businesses, more than a million of them in the United States, sell in our store and get access to all the customers we have through our store. That side of our business is growing much faster than the Amazon retail business, and I think it demonstrates the value proposition for all of the small and medium sized businesses. >> Yeah, we've got time for one more question, for Rebecca and I, one, you might have one. As Steve Jobs once said, technology, liberal arts, you've got the nice street signs kind of intersecting, I think that plays now more than ever societal impact has become a huge part of the conversation around tech, tech impact. You're a policy expert. You've been studying it. You're living in D.C. The policy game seems to be more important now than ever before around tech and the participation of technology companies in policy, not just hiring a policy firm, or a team to do it, actively engage and be, as an ingredient of the company. Is there enough people (laughs) that can actually do that, one, and what are some of the key policy opportunities are out there for either young individuals, like my daughter, or other young people coming out of college? Because it seems to me the game is shaping into a new direction. >> The space is fascinating because these issues really are front and center right now around questions around technology and how to ensure that as it continues to evolve that it does so in a way that allows for innovation but also protects private, civil liberties, and the like. You can't be in a more exciting space if you're going to be in the private sector engaging in policy. Even if you're in government, if you're on that side, it's a very interesting space to be in. All of it, tech has grown up, the internet has grown up, and there's no question that with that more attention is being paid. That's fine and appropriate. >> More responsibility and accountability. >> More responsibility, sure. >> I just have one more final thing in this. Because of your vantage point of someone who is in a famously tech savvy administration, the Obama Administration, and then we also see lawmakers questioning Mark Zuckerberg, seemingly not understanding how Facebook makes money, do lawmakers get it? >> I think a lot of lawmakers do. I was just with one, Mark Warner, from Virginia, U.S. senator, former telecomm executive and investor. He very much gets it. The caricature is, I think, exaggerated, but look, that's our job. It's our job, it's the press', it's everybody... One thing we do here with the team we have in D.C. is be a resource of information, try to explain, here's what's happening. Here's how our model works. Here's how the technology works. I think that can only help as regulators and lawmakers decide how they want to approach these problems. >> A lot of innovation opportunities. Just the CIA deal alone is set off from a gestation period, now growth around cloud acceleration. >> I think it demonstrates in a way we're very customer focused, and that is especially true when it comes to our national security agencies and defense agencies, but also that security's our first concern at AWS, as well as at broader Amazon. We're glad to have those customers. >> Thanks for coming by. >> Yup, thanks a lot. >> Yes, excellent. Thanks so much, Jay. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Please stay tuned for more of theCUBE AWS Public Sector. We will have Theresa Carlson coming up next. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE, covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by NetApp. (upbeat techno music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to this special CUBE presentation. We are here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada for NetApp Insight 2017. I'm John Furrier, your co-host and co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. Here at theCUBE, here with Keith Townsend for all day today. Keith Townsend at CTO Advisor covering NetApp 2017 here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. And before we kickoff a long day of great conversations with thought leaders, experts, executives, and also customers of NetApp who are transitioning to a whole digital world, a digital transformation. We can't not address the massacre that happened only a few days ago here in Las Vegas, here at the Mandalay Bay, our second home of theCUBE. If you know theCUBE, you know that we're here all the time. Hits home for us, but that pales in comparison to the families and victims of the 58 dead, 59 total but 58 that have died plus the shooter. Over 500 injured in the heinous cowardly act from the shooter who killed those people. Really I'm trying to kind of hold it together because it really hits home for me because, like 9/11, it's one of those moments that this is planned. This was a coordinated attack, kind of like the Oklahoma bombing, and it reflects on our society. I want to make a comment. And Keith, I'd like to get your thoughts in a minute. But first I would like to say our hearts and prayers are with the victims and families. And want to put a shout out to the first responders because if you look at the Mandalay Bay and what happened here, there could have been a lot more that have died. And that is really a testament to the people who responded, to this unpredictable act. And our prayers go out to the families and victims. And again, a shout out to the law enforcement people. Keith, this is a tragedy that people are trying to make sense out of it. And you know, we have to move on. Obviously, we're here at the NetApp event. A lot of great things to talk about with data and the future and how society will change with technology. But this is a time in history where we're seeing a societal shift. But we got to make sense of it. >> Yeah, you know, John, I'm going to try and keep it together as well. I think this is my seventh time in Vegas this year. And I'm sure every time I've spent at least some time in Mandalay Bay. This event, you know, I had a personal tragedy in my own life of losing my nephew to gun violence. We're all scratching for answers and trying to find a solution to this. And I'm a little bit ... It's a tough moment I think, personally, for us and our friends in the community. But the folks here at NetApp have done a really great job. Not just NetApp but the community in general, here in Las Vegas there's been folks in the community that have organized blood drives. The Red Cross has actually asked us to stop donating blood because of the outpouring of support. And I think that focus of hope in changing the world is what I would like to focus on. >> Well, I mean, take a company like NetApp having their annual customer event, partner event here at Mandalay Bay. It's their big event. And on their doorstep this happens. How they've handled themselves, I think, shows the culture of NetApp. They respect, they took pause. They canceled the first day. They handled it with extreme class. George Kurian put out there a personal story. But this is what it's about. We've got to move on. But I think to me, it's not about politics. It's not about any of that. It's about how do we move forward? And I hate to use a cliché, it's a wake up call. The world has changed in an instant through a prism of a known life. We heard that at 9/11. It's been 16 years. Enough's enough. And here's the deal, we have to be awake. We are realizing that, not the digital transformation for the enterprise, it is a transformation around the world. If you look at geopolitics, or you look at what's happened even today in the news. Even though the President of the United States is here to visit with the families, the Senate Intelligence Committee points out more fake news influenced via social media on Facebook with the Russians hacking the election. They didn't really hack the election, they just used advertising and albatross Facebook among other platforms to manipulate the election. Equifax hack, turns out as I reported originally on theCUBE, it was a state-sponsored activity, it was not a hack. These are new realities. And this is the theme that we see at theCUBE across our events that we go to, the new reality that we are living in a completely different society and it's on us to lean in and be part of the solution. And it's not about being a political solution or saying, "Hey, I'm praying." I mean, we're praying. But you can pray. Praying is what you do, action is another. But it's not about just the gun laws or this or that, it's about the society and the communities. The GoFundMe's are going crazy for the victims, but you can't replace the mother. We had a loss in our community, former Cisco employee lost her life, three kids. The communities have to lean in, individuals have to lean in if they have expertise. I think this is going to be a call to arms that's going to have a revolutionary effect on people. And I think it's an opportunity for the technology industry to lean in, use what we know. We have AI. We got blockchain. We got machine-learning. And this data, the slogan of NetApp couldn't be more perfect. Changing the world with data this is the mandate. >> So, George Kurian gave an ardent, and just compassionate... I had a tough time keeping myself together at the end of yesterday's keynote. George shared how data helped save his son's life. His 13-year-old son comes home every day thankful for technology. And we need to find ways to use AI, use machine learning to impact our communities. While we're talking about the larger, global community, even in my hometown of Chicago that's ravished by violence. You know, there's ways to use social media, data, AI-driven changes to help create policies and to help enable community organizers to understand the source of this nonsense basically. We say this is the new normal, but we should never grow numb to it. >> And I'm grateful -- >> John: No, it's not normal. It's not normal. And this is why I tell my daughter who's the class president of junior high school, Paolo Alto High School, this is not normal. This is not normal. This is not what we want. >> Keith: No! >> You know, you're personal tragedy, hit home with you personally. You had to rationalize it. And you're also a very active participant in the community. This is a new opportunity. The new normal is to behave differently, not the outcome. How do you look at that? Given what you've been through personally and now this, it brings together emotions but then the logic has to kick in. >> Keith: Right. >> You have to execute, actually take action. >> So, it started again Monday when a bunch of us had to make the decision on whether or not we're going to make the trip to Vegas to participate in a enterprise IT show. Your initial gut reaction is, "You know what, so many dead. What does it really matter to go to a conference at this point in time?" And then, you start to rationalize. "You know what? My way of life, our way of life cannot change. We can't allow this tragic event to change how we approach it." And again, NetApp and George did a great job of kicking off the conversation saying that we need to use this as a pivot point to drive the conversation to how us technologists can leverage this. >> Let's take this to where NetApp's living right now. NetApp Insight 2017 is the even we're kicking off here, all day coverage, here on theCUBE with Keith Townsend, expert in the field. Cloud, data, storage, it's all converging. But the reality is is that NetApp has SolidFire. They've bought great company. You're seeing a DNA transfer off of the original DNA of NetApp which has been very innovative culture. They have a very big success story as a start up, went public, and now are continuing to transform. Their customers are transforming but you bring up this new normal that the behavior we want to change and the outcomes that will become of it, speaks to the culture of what we're seeing in the enterprise transformation. A new class of developers are coming in. And the class of developers are about DevOps, their about infrastructure as code. And these new developers, have a new mindset. >> Yeah, so NetApp, a storage company, right? They store bits, retrieve bits. Not so much. They spent a hour on stage yesterday, even before they talked about any products, any architectures, talking about the value of data. Data is the ... And John, you've talked about data for as long as I've known you. Data is the number one asset of any company and NetApp focused not on storage, not on arrays, not on how fast the speeds and feeds go, but the value of data and extracting that value from your subsystems and then going into the conversation around how NetApp can assist in that journey in leveraging data. >> Okay, we're going to kickoff Day One coverage with NetApp Insight 2017 here on theCUBE. Changing the world with data. That is the focus, that is the conversation. And that is an aperture, that's the entire world from how you store the data, how to use the data. How do you to put it to work? How do you create value and transformation? This is theCUBE bringing the action here from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for NetApp Insight 2017. Stay with us. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. (upbeat techno music)