Pretty much any big project at a big company is going to have a “guidelines on what to say if the press or someone asks you about your work” document. It’s mandatory training at most companies. I’ve never been on a project that didn’t, and none of them are things I would consider even close to unethical.

This team sounds interesting but I get the feeling the WSJ is trying hard to make it seem like some sort of clandestine spy operation. This practice isn’t uncommon… I’ve worked at airlines and they sometimes have people fly on a competitor airline and they don’t broadcast broadly “hey united flight attendant!! I work at American Airlines!” but it isn’t because they’re trying to be a spy.

The subsidiary is literally called “big river” (Amazon is a big river), the employees of Big River listed amazon as their employer on LinkedIn, and it took a simple google search to see the owner of Big River was Amazon… they weren’t exactly trying hard to hide it. A spy operation this was not.