Amazon.com Inc. said today in a filing that a former National Security Agency director, General Keith Alexander, has been named to its board of directors.

Alexander (pictured) is a four-star Army general who brings considerable cybersecurity and national security expertise to Amazon, having also served as commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, which defends the country from cyberattacks. He currently serves as co-chief executive of IronNet Cybersecurity Inc.

Alexander’s appointment to Amazon’s board comes at a critical time for the company’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services Inc., which is still fighting to overturn a decision by the Department of Defense to award its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure to Microsoft. The JEDI contract, meant to help the Pentagon modernize its information technology infrastructure, could be worth up to $10 billion over the next 10 years.

Last week the Pentagon announced it was sticking with its earlier decision to award JEDI to Microsoft, following an extensive re-evaluation of the two company’s proposals. Amazon attacked that decision, saying that the contract award process was undermined by President Donald Trump’s personal animosity towards Amazon, and that it would continue to fight the decision.

Alexander is, however, also a controversial appointment for Amazon, since it was during his tenure at the NSA that the whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents relating to the widespread surveillance systems the U.S. government had built to spy on its citizens. Those systems included PRISM, which was described as a broad data collection program that scraped information from companies including Google LLC, Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that Amazon would benefit from Alexander’s expertise in cybersecurity, as well as his previous experience with the NSA and Cyber Command.

“It’s clear that future conflicts will be decided in the cloud and with artificial intelligence and machine learning, so it’s no surprise that Amazon wants someone with Alexander’s expertise,” Mueller said.

Alexander becomes Amazon’s 11th board director and will also serve as a member of its Audit Committee, according to his profile on the the company’s website.

He spoke to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s video studio, last year about his view of the cybersecurity landscape and what his own company is aiming to do:

Photo: Atlantic Council/Flickr