Amazon Web Services CEO Says Company Has Dropped NDAs With Government Agencies Amid Data Center Backlash

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies when seeking approval to build new data centers, a disclosure that comes as communities and lawmakers across the country push back against the industry's rapid expansion.

Garman made the announcement in a blog post that addressed what he described as four persistent myths about data centers — that they consume too much water, drive up electricity costs, generate significant pollution, and deliver little benefit to surrounding communities.

The NDA disclosure is a direct response to one of the most consistent criticisms of the data center industry. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently said that the number one complaint she has heard about data centers is transparency, describing a pattern of "projects 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."

Garman said that over the past three years, Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to communities across the United States where the company has a meaningful data center presence.

On the question of water use, Garman pointed to an Amazon report showing that "direct data center water consumption" accounts for 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, which he characterized as "orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries." Scientists have noted, however, that they need to study data centers' water and energy usage independently, since there are no federal or state requirements governing how tech companies report that data.

On electricity rates, Garman said costs have risen in some states with large concentrations of data centers but have declined or grown more slowly in others. He attributed increases primarily to aging grid infrastructure rather than data center demand. An independent watchdog, however, recently found that data centers were the main driver behind a 76% year-over-year price increase on America's largest electrical grid.

Regarding pollution, Garman argued that critics focus on the maximum emissions permitted under data center permits rather than actual output. A planned Amazon data center in Texas holds a permit to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than any other power plant in the United States. "The truth is data center generators almost never run," Garman said. "They're idle 99.9% of the time (they run roughly 10 hours per year, mostly for required maintenance testing)."

The stakes of the debate are significant. Garman said more than 100 data center moratoriums are currently being considered across the United States, including a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers announced by New York. "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 said.

Whether the transparency gesture moves the needle with skeptical communities remains an open question. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently argued that the AI infrastructure backlash is "fundamentally a crisis of trust," where people assume governments and tech companies are always "cooking up some new way to screw them over."

With moratoriums proliferating and local opposition showing no signs of abating, the industry's ability to build at the pace AI demand requires may increasingly depend on whether gestures like the NDA pledge translate into a broader restoration of community confidence.

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