If AWS used Intel SGX, then it would be possible for them to offer VMs that ran inside of a secure enclave that AWS could not peer into as long as Intel didn't give them a backdoor.
(Well, it seems like SGX is insecure right now with all of the CPU vulnerabilities, but in principle it may be fixed in a future generation and be well-suited for this.)
The fact that you wouldn't have to trust your host specifically could have a real decentralizing effect for cloud hosting: people would be able to run stuff on any cloud host without needing to trust them much. If you just wanted compute power and didn't care about strong uptime/connectivity, you could even safely rent cheap VMs on computers of random individuals.
(Well, it seems like SGX is insecure right now with all of the CPU vulnerabilities, but in principle it may be fixed in a future generation and be well-suited for this.)
The fact that you wouldn't have to trust your host specifically could have a real decentralizing effect for cloud hosting: people would be able to run stuff on any cloud host without needing to trust them much. If you just wanted compute power and didn't care about strong uptime/connectivity, you could even safely rent cheap VMs on computers of random individuals.