Jeff Bezos Wields a ‘Scorched Earth’ Contract Protest Strategy

Jeff Bezos is targeting large government contracts awarded to Amazon’s competitors in a strategy one legal expert called “extraordinarily aggressive.”

His companies have submitted bid protests on everything from military space launches to a key piece of hardware for NASA’s Artemis program, delaying the first humans to go to the moon by another year.

Here’s the thing: it seems to work. Two large and prestigious contracts disputed aggressively by Bezos—a Pentagon-wide cloud contract and NASA’s lunar lander—eventually yielded lucrative contracts for his companies.

Bloomberg News editor Brad Stone, who wrote a book about Bezos, characterized the Amazon founder’s approach ...