AWS drops NDAs with government agencies amid data center backlash

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, in its talks with government agencies over new data center projects. He made the statement in a blog post responding to months of local opposition to the facilities that store and process data for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

The NDA issue has become a flashpoint in that opposition. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has said the top complaint she hears about data centers is a lack of transparency, describing a recurring pattern: permits secured before projects are announced, developers who do not return calls, and local officials who signed nondisclosure agreements before their neighbors learned a project was being considered. New York recently imposed a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers, and Garman said more than 100 similar moratoriums are under consideration across the United States. He argued that if those measures pass, “the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket” in the competition to build AI infrastructure.

Garman’s post also pushed back on four claims he described as myths: that data centers use too much water, raise electricity prices, cause heavy pollution, and offer no benefit to the communities around them. Citing an Amazon report on its own water use, he said direct data center water consumption makes up 0.5% of industrial water use in the U.S., less than industries such as golf courses and almond farming. That figure covers only water used inside the facilities; it does not include water tied to generating the electricity that powers them or to manufacturing their chips, a gap outside researchers have said needs independent study since no federal or state rules require tech companies to report it.

On electricity costs, Garman said rates have risen in some states with many data centers and fallen or grown more slowly in others, and he blamed price increases on aging power grids rather than the facilities themselves. That runs counter to a recent finding from an independent grid watchdog, which identified data centers as the main driver of a 76% year-over-year price increase on the country’s largest electrical grid.

On pollution, Garman said critics cite the maximum emissions allowed under data center permits rather than actual output. A planned Amazon facility in Texas is permitted to emit 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, more than any other U.S. power plant, but Garman said the backup generators tied to that permit run only about 10 hours a year, mostly for required maintenance. He also said Amazon has put more than $1 billion into communities near its major data centers over the past three years.

Whether it will change minds

Dropping NDAs may not settle the dispute. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said the broader AI backlash reflects a “crisis of trust,” with people assuming companies and governments are out to take advantage of them. Writer Jasmine Sun has made a similar point: when data center opponents hear these arguments from tech companies, their usual response is that they don’t believe them. What happens next depends on whether local officials and residents treat the new NDA policy as a real change in disclosure or as another talking point, and whether the more than 100 pending moratorium proposals move forward regardless.