Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman announced that the cloud computing giant has officially stopped using nondisclosure agreements in its dealings with government agencies, a significant policy shift aimed at easing public transparency concerns as the company seeks local approvals to build new data center infrastructure across the United States.
Garman’s revelation was included as part of a broader, detailed blog post in which he attempted to push back against a rising tide of public suspicion surrounding the rapid expansion of data centers. As the artificial intelligence boom drives unprecedented demand for computing power, tech companies are finding themselves locked in an intense public relations battle over the local impact of these massive facilities. Garman’s post attempts to make the case that data centers are not the environmental and economic burdens critics claim, but are instead vital infrastructure that benefits local communities.
The elimination of NDAs addresses a central grievance fueling the broader data center backlash. Communities across the country have increasingly organized against proposed developments, citing a perceived lack of transparency from both corporate developers and local governments. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently highlighted this exact issue, pointing out that secrecy is the number one complaint she hears from residents fighting these projects. According to Brockovich, a recurring pattern involves data centers being announced only after permits have already been secured, developers who refuse to return phone calls, and local officials who signed nondisclosure agreements before residents even knew a project was under consideration.
This growing frustration has begun to translate into regulatory roadblocks. Earlier this year, New York State announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers, and Garman noted that more than 100 similar data center moratoriums are currently being considered by local and state governments across the United States.
Warning of the national implications of these local pushbacks, Garman argued that halting development could severely undermine American technological competitiveness. If these restrictive 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 added, the U.S. cannot afford to find itself in that position.
To counter the mounting resistance, Garman attempted to dismantle what he characterized as four major myths plaguing the data center industry: that they consume unsustainable amounts of water, that they drive up local electricity costs, that they emit massive amounts of air pollution, and that they provide no tangible benefits to their host communities.
Addressing concerns over water consumption, Garman pointed to an internal Amazon report on its own water usage. He argued that direct data center water consumption accounts for a mere 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, placing it orders of magnitude below industries like golf courses and almond farming.
However, the debate over water remains complex and contested. While companies like Nvidia have recently promoted advanced cooling systems that they claim eliminate virtually all water usage inside the facility itself, critics and industry observers point out that such claims often ignore the indirect water consumption tied to electricity generation and semiconductor manufacturing. Furthermore, independent scientists have repeatedly emphasized the need for standardized, independent studies on data center resource consumption, noting that there are currently no federal or state requirements mandating how tech companies must report their exact water and energy footprints.
On the contentious issue of electricity rates, Garman argued that rising power bills are only occurring in some states with high concentrations of data centers, while rates have actually gone down or grown at a slower pace in others. When energy rates do increase, he asserted, the primary culprit is an aging electrical grid that failed to receive necessary investments and expansions before the surge in demand arrived.
That perspective contrasts sharply with findings from independent energy watchdogs. Recently, a market monitor pointed to data centers as the primary driver behind a staggering 76% year-over-year price increase on America’s largest electrical grid, highlighting the immense strain that high-density computing loads are placing on regional power systems.
Pollution is another major flashpoint for the industry. Legal battles are already underway, such as a lawsuit filed by the NAACP against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI over the emissions generated by backup diesel generators at their data center facilities. Garman complained that critics often misrepresent the situation by focusing on the maximum permitted pollution levels rather than actual operations. For example, a planned Amazon data center in Texas holds a permit allowing it to release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, a figure that would make it larger than any individual power plant in the United States.
Pushing back against those figures, Garman insisted that backup generators almost never run under normal circumstances. According to Amazon, these generators remain idle 99.9% of the time, operating for roughly 10 hours per year primarily to satisfy mandatory maintenance testing requirements.
When turning to the issue of community benefits, Garman highlighted the company’s policy shift regarding government transparency, confirming that Amazon no longer utilizes nondisclosure agreements with government agencies on its projects. Additionally, he noted that over the past three years, Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to communities across the United States where the company maintains a meaningful data center presence.
Whether these concessions and arguments will be sufficient to quell widespread public suspicion remains an open question. Industry leaders and observers acknowledge that overcoming deep-seated skepticism will be difficult. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently described the broader backlash against artificial intelligence infrastructure as fundamentally a crisis of trust, wherein the public assumes that governments and major technology companies are constantly working behind closed doors to their detriment. Similarly, writer Jasmine Sun observed that when data center opponents are presented with corporate economic and environmental defenses, their immediate reaction is frequently one of outright disbelief.
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