Ethical Stack

AWS Bedrock

Managed model marketplace and inference service; AWS hosting terms differ from each underlying model provider’s training data and IP practices.

Score calculation

(5 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 2) ÷ 5 = 4.4

5 of six dimensions rated. Unrated dimensions and BDS status are excluded.

Full scoring method ↗
Setup details

AWS operates infrastructure, routes selected third-party and Amazon models, and customer settings can affect retention/provider sharing.

Energy

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AWS Sustainability estimates carbon and water impacts for cloud usage and supports account, region, and service groupings; Bedrock is not separately broken out in current service views and falls within “Other.” The former Customer Carbon Footprint Tool was deprecated in June 2026, so the current Sustainability service is the relevant source. These estimates are useful for account-level review, not Bedrock model/request-level electricity or water.

Reasoning & sources

AWS now offers independently verified estimation methods and account/region reporting, but Bedrock is aggregated with other products and the figures are not model- or request-specific. For a deployment, request or export the selected service and region’s usage-linked footprint when available; do not treat company-wide renewable matching as per-request impact.

AWS now offers independently verified estimation methods and account/region reporting, but Bedrock is aggregated with other products and the figures are not model- or request-specific.

No Bedrock request-level power, water or emissions figure; workload and region determine actual footprint.

Training rights

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AWS says Bedrock prompts/outputs are not used to train underlying models absent customer consent, but the training corpus and rights of each third-party foundation model remain provider-specific.

Reasoning & sources

AWS says Bedrock prompts/outputs are not used to train underlying models absent customer consent, but the training corpus and rights of each third-party foundation model remain provider-specific. Select the model first and review its license plus corpus-provenance disclosures; prompt no-training terms do not clear the model’s original dataset.

Review selected model-provider terms and dataset provenance separately; customer prompt policy is not corpus-rights evidence.

Privacy

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Bedrock account/project retention modes include none/default/inherit and provider_data_share; some models or APIs require retention or provider sharing, and flagged safety content can be retained/reviewed. Settings are configuration- and model-specific.

Reasoning & sources

Retention and provider-sharing controls are configurable, but behavior varies by model/API and safety-review exceptions can retain content. Check the exact API/web surface, plan, region, retention setting, routing, and stateful features in the applicable terms before sending sensitive content.

Retention and provider-sharing controls are configurable, but behavior varies by model/API and safety-review exceptions can retain content.

Model’s current allowed modes, API statefulness, region/cross-region routing, and account configuration must be inspected.

Openness

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Bedrock offers open-weight and proprietary models through a managed service; model choice is broad, but the serving stack and portability depend on each provider.

Reasoning & sources

Open-weight choice is useful, but the managed inference stack and model-specific terms limit portability. Check whether the chosen model’s weights and license permit inspection or relocation, and whether the serving runtime moves too; API compatibility alone is not an open stack.

Open-weight choice is useful, but the managed inference stack and model-specific terms limit portability.

Open-weight availability and rights vary by provider/model and do not carry across the whole service.

Worker treatment

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Amazon’s Supply Chain Standards Manual makes human-rights and labor standards a condition of supplier relationships and describes monitoring and corrective processes. This is a supply-chain policy, not evidence of current Bedrock annotation-worker conditions or audit outcomes.

Reasoning & sources

Amazon requires supplier standards and describes monitoring, but publishes no Bedrock-specific worker outcomes here. Ask for current vendor-level pay, exposure, location, audit, and remediation records; a supplier code cannot substitute for worker outcomes.

Amazon requires supplier standards and describes monitoring, but publishes no Bedrock-specific worker outcomes here.

No current Bedrock- or foundation-model-specific labor audit results were established.

Government & military

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AWS funds U.S. defense work that names autonomous systems and battle-management uses. Separately, Israel’s procurement administration identifies AWS as a Nimbus public-cloud provider; AFSC and Who Profits describe military/security use, while the Guardian reports contract terms limiting service withdrawal. These sources do not establish AWS’s role in a particular attack.

Reasoning & sources

AWS funds defense work that explicitly includes autonomous systems and battle management across classification levels; no independent safeguards assessment is published. Request the named contract and actual model/endpoint scope with enforceable use controls; do not treat ordinary government work or silence as proof of military use.

AWS funds defense work that explicitly includes autonomous systems and battle management across classification levels; no independent safeguards assessment is published.

The announced credits and eligible use cases do not establish which projects received funding or which AWS AI services each project selected.

BDS status

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Amazon is named as a pressure target in the BNC’s official campaign sources. The product is developed or supplied by Amazon.

Reasoning & sources

If following this BNC campaign is a requirement, consider alternatives to paid Amazon products where practical. Your selected model, cloud and billing route can introduce other companies into the purchase. This label follows the named company’s campaign status; it does not claim that BDS separately reviewed this exact product.

This review covers the named targets in the BNC consumer/pressure guide and No Tech campaign, not every BDS campaign, local group, investment or supplier. Lists and ownership can change. A company’s absence from these lists is not an endorsement or proof that it has no relevant relationships.

Israel’s procurement administration names AWS as a Nimbus public-cloud provider and the Ministry of Defense and IDF as project partners. The Guardian’s investigation of leaked agreement documents reports terms restricting AWS’s ability to suspend service, including after alleged policy violations. Who Profits and AFSC describe AWS cloud services in military/security infrastructure and surveillance-related uses; those are attributed research claims, not proof of AWS’s role in a specific attack. Both companies denied circumventing legal obligations in response to the Guardian investigation.

The government record establishes the contract and project participants; the investigative reporting describes contract controls, and research organizations make broader use claims. The reviewed evidence does not establish AWS’s contribution to a particular operation, injury, or other specific harm.

All sources

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