Could the AI industry win over data center opponents by dropping non-disclosure agreements?

Amazon recently announced it will stop using nondisclosure agreements when negotiating with local governments over data centers, following a similar move by Microsoft earlier this year. The announcement was buried inside a longer blog post arguing that data centers benefit communities. The change comes as a growing number of local moratoriums on data center construction raise questions about whether the industry can win back public trust.

Background: A Long History of Secret Negotiations

The tech industry has a well-documented pattern of negotiating infrastructure deals behind closed doors. During Uber's rapid expansion in the mid-2010s, the company routinely used NDAs when working with local governments. One notable case involved a city outside Orlando, where Uber negotiated tax subsidies to fund rides to public transit—entirely in secret. The secrecy allowed Uber to ask for increasingly broad concessions without public scrutiny.

Amazon's data center negotiations have followed a similar playbook. Many projects are discussed without the public knowing who will ultimately occupy or use the facility. This opacity has fueled community opposition, as residents worry about effects on property values, electricity bills, and water usage—concerns that may be real, inflated, or somewhere in between.

The Moratorium Wave and Industry Anxiety

A significant number of data center moratoriums have been passed recently, including one in San Francisco. Most last only one or two years. In New York, a moratorium on permits for large projects is tied to an environmental review process expected to take about a year.

Rebecca Bellan, who speaks regularly with people in the data center industry, noted that these facilities take two to five years to come online anyway, with buildouts facing delays from zoning to funding. The practical effect of short moratoriums may therefore be limited. But the political pushback has clearly rattled data center proponents.

Anthony Ha pointed out that moratoriums are often framed as temporary pauses for study rather than outright rejections, giving officials room to later approve projects. Still, he noted, the people trying to build data centers are worried—evidenced by what he described as unhinged tweets from figures like Trump and David Sacks.

Microsoft's Earlier Move and the Limits of NDA Reform

Microsoft made a similar announcement about ending NDAs earlier this year. Anthony Ha acknowledged that dropping NDAs alone won't convert opponents into supporters. But he framed it as a necessary first step: communities currently don't even know what companies are proposing because everything has been negotiated in secret.

Sean O'Kane agreed that the root problem is communication. The tech industry, he argued, does a poor job explaining itself—especially in an era where companies believe they can "go direct" and bypass media. The frustration is mutual: industry leaders are constantly annoyed that most people can't envision a world where AI and data centers are useful to them. O'Kane attributed this partly to technological limitations and partly to poor messaging.

He cited Tesla as an example. A year after the company announced its mission of "sustainable abundance"—later changed to "amazing abundance"—Tesla still hasn't defined what that means, despite releasing a multi-page PDF. Even Tesla's biggest fans criticized the vagueness, with O'Kane describing it as reading like LLM nonsense.

What It Means for the Industry

The shift from "this future is inevitable" to "you have to make the case for it" marks a meaningful change in how AI infrastructure is being received. For years, the narrative was that AI-driven data centers were coming regardless of local opposition. Now, moratoriums and community pushback have introduced friction at key points.

Amazon's NDA announcement is a small but symbolic step. It signals that the industry recognizes it has a trust problem. Whether it leads to communities actually delaying or killing infrastructure projects remains uncertain. What's clear is that data center builders are worried—and that the era of quietly negotiating in back rooms may be ending.