I think the "war chest" argument here is that AWS can out compete any other hosting solution by "slowly burning" their way to the top. AWS is a conglomerate and can afford to lose money on a single service. Companies like ES cannot without going under. It is monopolistic behavior and that is harmful.
Plenty of businesses compete with AWS just fine. Looking at Elastic Co's financials, they also appear to be competing just fine.
If they tell you they're not, what they're actually saying is that they've chosen a poor business model.
In this case, it looks like they've got a perfectly reasonable business, but they're upset it's not even bigger, and therefore they'd like a monopoly over ES hosting.
> It is monopolistic behavior and that is harmful.
