It’s an interesting choice. I suspect the value of the land itself may be a draw.
Oatlands is the next town over from Asburn, VA where the largest concentration of data centers in the world is.
To me, this will leverage Amazon’s growth as a cloud computing powerhouse and also Amazon’s support of the cloud operations of the US federal government.
Regular companies and corporations have Information technology staff who make smart decisions about their IT infrastructure. But the government generally defers to private industry and “cloud” infrastructure is turning out to be a way for challengers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to uproot IBM, Oracle, and other systems integrators to haul down IT infrastructure contracts.
So by locating in Oatlands, its staff is close enough to gain influence in DC and also help build new data centers adjacent to Ashburn.
Sounds like a brilliant plan. And if Trump can drastically cut the federal employee workforce in the next several years, there are some highly trained, well-educated people in and around Oatlands to be tapped as employees.
Thanks, great input!
Now if Bezos would just retire to some liberal hellhole and be succeeded by a Trumpian CEO, we can sleep better for the future.