AWS Executive Insights

As AI agents become part of day-to-day business operations, security leaders face a new set of questions around identity, autonomy, permissions, and control. In this episode of AWS Executive Insights, Pascal Bornet speaks with Steve Schmidt, Chief Security Officer at Amazon, about how organisations should approach security in an era shaped by AI agents and automation.
Bornet and Schmidt discuss why agents should have their own identity, how companies should think about permissions and logging, and why human judgement still matters in high-stakes environments. They also cover the risks introduced by prompt injection, the role of external guardrails, and how AI is already helping defenders move faster against threats at scale.
This episode offers a practical view of how security teams and business leaders can respond to the rise of AI agents, with clear actions companies can take now to build safer systems from the start.
Learn more about AWS Agentic AI: https://aws.amazon.com/ai/agentic-ai/?trk=80F9DhCw5AKb6zC

Clearwater Analytics has gone from concept to over 800 AI agents in production, and Darrel Cherry, VP and Distinguished Engineer, shares the story behind that journey. In conversation with Arvind Mathur, Executive in Residence at AWS, Cherry traces how Clearwater built its own AI studio, multi-agent orchestration system, and no-code agent development environment before most of today's tools and frameworks even existed.
Cherry also details how Clearwater ensures accuracy in a zero-error-tolerance industry, from building a custom LLM evaluation framework to maintaining full audit trails across every agent action.
This episode offers leaders a practical blueprint for scaling AI from internal experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption, while maintaining the accuracy and trust that high-stakes industries demand.

What does it take to bring world-class connectivity to the billions of people and businesses that have never had reliable access? Tom Soderstrom, AWS Executive in Residence, and Chris Weber, VP of Business at Amazon Leo, share how Amazon Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) is building toward that vision one launch at a time, with over 200 satellites in orbit since this conversation took place in December 2025.
Soderstrom and Weber discuss what sets Amazon Leo apart, from gigabit downlink speeds and private connectivity that never touches the public internet, to a customer-obsessed approach to service, support, and partnerships. This episode offers a compelling look at the technology, partnerships, and customer obsession driving Amazon Leo forward, and the global impact it stands to make along the way.

For over 65 years, the Jane Goodall Institute has been quietly building one of the most extraordinary conservation datasets on earth, captured largely by hand in the forests of Gombe. Now, AI is unlocking its full potential. Dr. Lilian Pintea, VP of Conservation Science at JGI, joins Shaown Nandi, Vice President of AWS Technology, to share how decades of rigorous field research are shaping a thoughtful and powerful approach to AI in conservation science.
Lilian discusses how JGI is building an AI platform to identify individual chimpanzees, extract behavioral insights from video, and unlock decades of multilingual field data. Grounded in JGI's community-led Tacare conservation model, he explains why earning community trust and designing for sustainability from the start are not just values. They are prerequisites.
This episode is a reminder that the most enduring AI innovations are the ones built with the planet and its people in mind.

Most organizations are experimenting with AI. Far fewer are transforming with it. Bernhard Mühlreiter, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, makes the case for why that gap is closing and what it takes to be on the right side of it.
In conversation with Richard Taylor, Retail and Consumer Goods Lead APJ at AWS, Mühlreiter outlines the three things that distinguish AI leaders: bold ambition, managing AI as a true transformation program, and broad-based capability building. He explores why lack of speed remains the biggest disappointment he sees in organizations today, and why, as Andy Jassy has noted, speed is ultimately a leadership decision.
From T-shaped transformation frameworks to agile "digital factory" team structures, this episode offers executives a clear-eyed and practical perspective on how to move from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide AI impact.