It's in Arlington because... lobbying! Bezos wanted to absorb more defense spending in AWS and chose to be physically nearby to rub shoulders and get deals.
> us-east-1 is in Northern VA. There's also a videogame company called Bethesda that you might have heard of.
I doubt us-east-1 employs more than a handful of people. Datacenters are primarily hands-off. Bethesda supposedly has ~650 employees across 6 continents.
But I think you're missing the point: am I to understand that having datacenters and game developers in the area leads it to having the highest median household income in this fantastically wealthy country? Not New York with Wall Street, or Los Angeles through whose port the two largest economies in the world trade, or San Francisco with its own world-class port and all of its software industry?
Do you really think suburban DC would be so rich if it wasn't for people wanting to pay to be near the seat of a globe-spanning empire, to be better positioned to peddle influence and get rich off of the taxpayer's back? Do you not find that to be at least a little disgusting?