Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman announced that the cloud computing giant has officially stopped using nondisclosure agreements in its dealings with government agencies as part of a sweeping effort to secure approval for new data center developments.
The policy shift was revealed as a single, notable sentence embedded within a broader blog post published by Amazon. In the post, Garman attempted to push back against a wave of widespread suspicion surrounding data center expansion, working to make the public case that these massive digital infrastructure projects are ultimately beneficial for the local communities that host them.
The reliance on nondisclosure agreements has long been a significant piece of the broader public backlash against data center development. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently highlighted that lack of transparency is the number one complaint she has heard from communities grappling with these projects. According to Brockovich, a common pattern has emerged across the United States: projects are often announced only after permits have already been secured, developers routinely fail to return calls from concerned residents, and local government officials frequently sign strict NDAs before their neighbors even know a project is under consideration.
This growing secrecy and the resulting public friction have sparked tangible legislative pushback. New York State recently announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large-scale data centers, and according to Garman’s recent disclosures, there are currently more than 100 separate data center moratoriums being weighed or considered by local and state governments across the United States.
Garman warned against the economic and technological consequences of these mounting restrictions. If these measures are enacted, he claimed, the United States could be writing its own losing ticket in the global technology race, with consequences that would last for generations. As a country, he argued, the United States cannot afford to find itself in that vulnerable position.
To counter the growing resistance, Garman attempted to dismantle what he described as four major myths surrounding data centers: the beliefs that they consume excessive water, that they drive up local electricity costs, that they emit overwhelming amounts of air pollution, and that they fail to provide meaningful economic benefits to their host communities.
Addressing concerns over water consumption, Garman pointed to an internal Amazon report on its own water usage. He stated that direct data center water consumption accounts for a mere 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, arguing that this volume is orders of magnitude less than what is consumed by golf courses, almond farming, and various other industrial sectors.
The tech industry has increasingly spotlighted technological fixes for water usage. Nvidia recently announced a new cooling system that it claims eliminates pretty much all water usage inside the data center. However, critics note that claims like Nvidia’s and Amazon’s often ignore the broader, indirect water usage involved in off-site electricity generation and semiconductor manufacturing. Independent scientists have emphasized the urgent need to study data centers’ water and energy consumption independently, pointing out that there are currently no federal or state regulatory requirements governing how major technology companies report these critical metrics.
Regarding electricity rates and grid stability, Garman asserted that consumer electricity prices have only gone up in a handful of states with unusually high concentrations of data centers, while rates have actually declined or grown at a much slower pace in other regions. He argued that in instances where energy rates are climbing, the primary culprit is an aging electrical grid that has not been adequately invested in or expanded to meet growing baseline demand before new tech loads arrived.
That perspective contrasts sharply with findings from independent energy watchdogs. A recent report from a grid monitor pointed directly to data centers as the main catalyst behind a striking 76% year-over-year price surge on America’s largest electrical grid.
The debate over environmental impact extends firmly into the realm of air pollution. This issue has become so contentious that the NAACP recently filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI over the heavy-duty backup generators powering their data center operations. Garman complained that critics of Amazon’s infrastructure unfairly focus on the maximum theoretical amount of pollution allowed under operating permits. For instance, a planned Amazon data center in Texas is legally permitted to release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, a volume that would make it larger than any traditional power plant operating in the United States.
Pushing back against those figures, Garman insisted that the reality on the ground is entirely different. He stated that data center backup generators almost never run, remaining idle for 99.9% of the time and operating for roughly only 10 hours per year, mostly to satisfy mandatory maintenance testing schedules.
When turning to the issue of community benefits, Garman highlighted the company’s new transparency measures, explicitly noting the end of government NDAs. He also emphasized financial contributions, stating that over the past three years, Amazon has invested more than $1 billion into communities across the United States that maintain a meaningful data center presence.
Whether these concessions and defensive arguments will be enough to quell intense community suspicion remains an open question. Industry leaders and commentators alike have noted that the friction surrounding technological expansion goes far beyond technical metrics like water and power usage. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently argued that the broader AI backlash is fundamentally a crisis of trust, driven by a public assumption that governments and powerful technology companies are constantly cooking up new ways to exploit them. Similarly, writer Jasmine Sun observed that when data center opponents are presented with defensive arguments from tech executives, their most common response is simply a flat rejection: I do not believe them.
