Amazon Web Services has stopped using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies in its data center projects, AWS chief executive Matt Garman announced in a blog post on Friday, in a bid to defuse a growing backlash over the secrecy surrounding AI infrastructure expansion.
Garman described the move in a single sentence of a longer post that pushed back against suspicion of data centers and argued they are good for local communities.
Transparency is the flashpoint
NDAs have become one of the most contentious parts of the data center boom. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently said the number one complaint she hears about data centers is transparency, describing a pattern in which "projects are announced after permits are already secured, developers who don't return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered".
The backlash has had real consequences. New York has announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers, and Garman said more than 100 data center moratoriums are currently being considered across the United States.
"If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations," Garman wrote. "As a country, we can't afford to find ourselves in that position."
Four myths, Garman says
Garman tried to puncture what he called four big myths about data centers: that they consume too much water, that they increase electricity costs, that they emit enormous amounts of pollution, and that they bring no benefits to their communities.
Citing Amazon's own water report, he said "direct data center water consumption" accounts for only 0.5 percent of all industrial water usage in the United States — "orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries." He also said data center backup generators run roughly 10 hours a year, mostly for maintenance testing, and are idle 99.9 percent of the time — though he acknowledged a planned Amazon data center in Texas is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
On community benefits, Garman said Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion over the past three years to U.S. communities where it has a significant data center presence. Whether that will be enough to rebuild trust remains an open question — Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei recently argued the AI backlash is "fundamentally a crisis of trust."
Sources: TechCrunch: Amazon responds to data center backlash, says it no longer uses NDAs
Garman described the move in a single sentence of a longer post that pushed back against suspicion of data centers and argued they are good for local communities.
Transparency is the flashpoint
NDAs have become one of the most contentious parts of the data center boom. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently said the number one complaint she hears about data centers is transparency, describing a pattern in which "projects are announced after permits are already secured, developers who don't return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered".
The backlash has had real consequences. New York has announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers, and Garman said more than 100 data center moratoriums are currently being considered across the United States.
"If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations," Garman wrote. "As a country, we can't afford to find ourselves in that position."
Four myths, Garman says
Garman tried to puncture what he called four big myths about data centers: that they consume too much water, that they increase electricity costs, that they emit enormous amounts of pollution, and that they bring no benefits to their communities.
Citing Amazon's own water report, he said "direct data center water consumption" accounts for only 0.5 percent of all industrial water usage in the United States — "orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries." He also said data center backup generators run roughly 10 hours a year, mostly for maintenance testing, and are idle 99.9 percent of the time — though he acknowledged a planned Amazon data center in Texas is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
On community benefits, Garman said Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion over the past three years to U.S. communities where it has a significant data center presence. Whether that will be enough to rebuild trust remains an open question — Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei recently argued the AI backlash is "fundamentally a crisis of trust."
Sources: TechCrunch: Amazon responds to data center backlash, says it no longer uses NDAs
