RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Jeff Bezos built Amazon into an e-commerce and computing powerhouse. Now his ambitions are more sprawling as he takes on ever larger civic and business challenges.
Those diverse interests were on display on Tuesday when Mr. Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, spoke onstage at the Code technology conference here, where he commented on an array of topics, including workplace culture, privacy and his decision to buy The Washington Post in 2013.
Mr. Bezos said he bought the newspaper because he wanted to make it into a more powerful national — and even global — publication, and that The Post was well situated to be a watchdog over the leaders of the world's most powerful country. "If it had been a financially upside-down salty snack food company, I would not have bought it," he said.
The Amazon chief also addressed an investigation last summer by The New York Times that found the company had a tough workplace culture. Mr. Bezos said the article had not made him rethink how Amazon treated employees and that the company was "the gold standard for pioneering work."
He also commented on the tension between privacy and national security, calling it "the issue of our age" and noting that Amazon had filed a court brief supporting Apple during its recent battle with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over an iPhone used by one of the attackers in a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., last December.
Mr. Bezos' comments come at a time when he and Amazon are riding on new highs. After a rough patch in which Amazon's sales fell short of expectations and new products like the Fire Phone flopped, the company is flourishing. A bet Mr. Bezos placed on cloud services more than a decade ago has blossomed into a $ 10-billion-a-year business, leading Amazon to the biggest profit in its history in the first quarter of 2016. The Echo, Amazon's smart speaker, has earned raves from technology reviewers and customers.
Mr. Bezos' personal profile has also soared with his acquisition of The Post. Under his ownership, the newspaper's online audience has grown. The Post reported 30 percent year-over-year growth in unique digital visitors in April.
A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bezos traded shots with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, who accused Mr. Bezos of dodging corporate taxes and abusing his position as owner of The Post to launch personal attacks and to keep lawmakers from scrutinizing Amazon.
Mr. Bezos said at the time that Mr. Trump's unsubstantiated statements were "not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave" and that he welcomed scrutiny and criticism of Amazon.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bezos reiterated it was "not appropriate" for Mr. Trump to "freeze or chill the media that are examining him."
"It's just a fact that we live in a world where half the population of this planet, if you criticize the leader, you'll go to jail or worse," Mr. Bezos said. "We live in this amazing democracy with amazing freedom of speech, and a presidential candidate should embrace that."
Mr. Bezos also predicted that global population growth and energy demand would increase pressure to make space more accessible. He owns a space exploration start-up called Blue Origin.
He predicted that heavy industry would move off the planet and "earth will be zoned residential and light industrial."
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