AWS stops signing NDAs with governments over data center approvals

According to an October 4 report, AWS CEO Matt Garman said in a lengthy official blog post that the company has stopped signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with government agencies while seeking approval for new data center projects. The post was framed as a response to broad public skepticism about data centers and argued that they can bring benefits to local communities. The report does not say when the practice stopped, nor does it name any agency AWS had previously signed such an agreement with.

NDAs have become a focal point of the resistance to data center construction. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently said that transparency is the most common complaint raised about data centers, describing a recurring pattern: a project is only made public after it has been permitted, developers do not return calls from local residents, and local officials sign NDAs before people living nearby know anything about the plans. Garman's statement reads as an answer to that line of criticism.

On the approvals side, New York has announced a one-year pause on approvals for large data centers amid grassroots opposition, the report says. Garman said more than 100 similar proposals are currently under review across the United States, and warned that if such restrictions take effect, the country would lose the AI compute race.

The story now rests on the AWS blog post itself. The source does not indicate whether other companies have followed with similar commitments, or which specific AWS projects have been affected.