Pentagon announces 2,000% increase in Russia trolls since Friday
Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in Saturday's Pentagon briefing that there has been a "2,000% increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," following the coordinated strike against Syria on Friday night.
The bottom line: The problem of Russian actors generating division and conflict among Americans isn't going away. As Axios' Sara Fischer and David McCabe reported last year, they aim to sow confusion and capitalize on political divisions. Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement on Saturday that this illustrates what "the wars of the future will look like...The fog of war will not be limited to our situation rooms and battlefields."
Amazon is an iceberg: People only see what's above the surface. Meanwhile, underneath, the company just keeps expanding.
Why you'll hear about this again: This has proven true time and time again. When people thought of Amazon as a bookstore, it was already on its way to being an e-commerce giant. When all people saw was an e-commerce giant, Amazon was well on its way to being a marketplace and web services provider.
Amazon Prime — with its expansion into video and music services and its moves into brick and mortar — has been similarly underestimated, though people have at least learned to fear what the company might be up to next.
Here are a couple of new data points suggesting how huge the Amazon iceberg has grown — and where it's headed:
After years of being vague about numbers, Amazon confirmed Tuesday that there are 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers. That means they have managed to convince a huge swath of the U.S. population to sign up. (Amazon didn't break out how many of the Prime subscribers were in the U.S. vs. international.)
Amazon struck a deal with Best Buy that will see the electronics chain carry televisions with Amazon's Fire TV built in. Now, fast forward a few years and which seems more likely — that this headline will come back to haunt Amazon when Best Buy takes over the online electronics business or that Amazon will get the last laugh?
Amazon is announcing today "blueprints" for Alexa, a way for home users to easily create their own quizzes and games for Echo and other devices. Again, some looked at the Echo and saw a smart speaker, where Amazon has quietly built an entirely new operating system.
Go deeper: Axios business editor Dan Primack and I went back and forth about Amazon's size and strength in a video earlier this year.
