This article is needlessly histrionic. Companies will patent anything they can just so they can have the patent and not somebody else. Jumping from that to "Ama

This article is needlessly histrionic. Companies will patent anything they can just so they can have the patent and not somebody else. Jumping from that to "Amazon's plan to bring about a nightmarish dystopia" is a bit much. Could this bring about a police state? Yes absolutely. But the technology is possible to build, so someone will build it, or at least patent it. There's no preventing the technology from existing. We don't prevent a police state from happening by freaking out about the technology that enables it. We prevent it by voting for responsible leaders. So let's just assume that the technology for government oppression is going to exist and make sure we structure our government in such a way that it doesn't oppress us.