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Amazon Tried to Replace Visa Workers with AI

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek0
Amazon warehouse

When Amazon tried to replace visa workers with AI (after replacing U.S. citizens with visa workers) it found out the hard way AI write code just as shitty as the visa workers only it writes it faster!

High Blast Radius

The new buzz-phrase in America is High Blast Radius. You’re going to see more and more high blast radius outages, not fewer. Why? Because MBAs have been purged of morals, ethics, and dignity. Throw anyone and anything under the bus for a fast buck.

Real Software Engineering, which Agile is not:

  • mandates the waterfall documentation so everybody knows what is going on
  • demands a cohesive architecture strictly enforced by application and system architects
  • mandates physical testing on a physical test system
  • mandates for every production turn you have both a monitor and a fall-back position documented up front not scrambling after the fact
  • deliberately slows production turns so you aren’t having high blast radius outages multiple times per week
  • mandates you have a disaster recovery plan in place before new systems development

Remember When Amazon Hired U.S. Citizens to Program?

I do. Amazon had some spectacular high blast radius outages back then. All due to hardware and electrical grid issues. Hey, when you get your stuff made for the cheapest price in the cheapest country you cannot expect quality. When you cut corners building a data center and don’t have a gigantic surge protector on the incoming power, expect a fatal spike.

Most of the Amazon software back then was designed so it couldn’t have cascading failures. Not so today!

When you have everything routing through core services one F-up knocks down everyone stupid enough to do business with you. This is why real software engineering mandates actual testing on actual hardware, no TDD and go.

Great Visa Worker Purge

That purge started in 2023. It accelerated in 2025. Today it is called AI washing. Why not? Once you’ve gotten used to shitty bug riddled code and global outages, why not get that code for free? If you don’t you are going to have to pay that extra $100,000 tax on the visa applications.

Think About National Security

Nobody in the Trump administration will bother to think about National Security, so far I haven’t heard of one that is even qualified, but you, the heads of corporations and developers dumb enough to use Agile or AI have to! Corporations hiring at the bottom end of the wage scale letting developers just blindly cobble together Amazon (or Microsoft) Web services have to think about the National Security implications.

You think it doesn’t matter? You need to learn to think. We have Iran launching cyber attacks over a foolish oil war. If only 20% of American companies use AWS, that’s a 20% nationwide outage. It could last weeks if not longer. Amazon, Target, Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart all have pharmacies. Just how exposed are they? For people needing IV drugs that have to be freshly blended and refrigerated, can you go a month or two without it? How about your heart meds?

Even if only Amazon in this list uses AWS, you can bet the insurance companies and supply chain will be impacted. They all fished at the bottom end of the talent pool and used the cheapest tools because most of their developers didn’t go to college for Software Engineering.

Bottom Feeding Assassins

Most people ignore the news about failed Iranian backed assassination attempts, but they shouldn’t. Iran can only find and turn life’s losers for such tasks. In general, they get bottom feeders. Now look at the visa workers who aren’t highly skilled writing code for companies like Amazon and other publicly traded corporations. Once they are here for any length of time they know they are being paid less than one third of market rate and in general are treated like shit.

How difficult will it be for Iran to run hundreds of these workers? Keep in mind, they don’t have to actually launch any attack or install any virus. All they have to do is deliberately insure a high blast radius bug gets turned into production and let their handlers know how to exploit it.

The reason you have to be a U.S. citizen to start down most security clearance paths is the fact it is easier to turn someone who wasn’t born here. They don’t have family history and deep ties to the country.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.

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