Amazon Dropped Its Data Center NDAs and Pledged $1 Billion as Towns Push Back

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman posted two things on Friday that belong together: more than $1 billion over five years for the U.S. towns that host Amazon data centers, and an end to the nondisclosure agreements the company had been signing with the government agencies it builds with. The money goes to free community college, job training, energy upgrades and local priorities through a program Amazon calls Built Together. 12

Why the change: the pushback. Garman's own figure is that over 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the country, and he says that if they pass, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket in the AI race. Against Amazon's projected $220 billion in capital spending this year, the new money works out to about $200 million a year — about one-tenth of 1% of the build it is meant to protect. 2

The NDAs were the sharper part of the story. County officials who signed them could not tell residents a project's electricity demand or its water use, and some could not name the company behind it. Tucson's "Project Blue" was only tied to Amazon through a public records request; South Bend, Indiana, and Wharton County, Texas, had their own versions, and the Texas one was signed with a contractor rather than Amazon itself. In the House, a bipartisan bill introduced in September would void those agreements outright. 34

Garman's post blames "misinformation and outright lies," and says there are widespread reports of other countries seeding misinformation about data centers to slow the U.S. down. PolitiFact looked at that claim in September and found the politicians making it exaggerate the effect; experts say they see little evidence Chinese misinformation drove a backlash that runs from Bernie Sanders to Steve Bannon. The poll numbers point the same way: an Economist/YouGov survey fielded August 28–31 found 63% of Americans would oppose a data center in their own community, while only 19% would support one, and 60% expect it to raise their electricity bills. 56

Two other things moved the same day. Apple said it is adding controls around macOS "Full Disk Access" — the permission that lets an app read files, mail, messages and browsing history — because AI agents have increased the risks of holding it; the change follows a journalist's claim that Meta's Muse read his private messages, which Meta disputes, and a WIRED report on a flaw in ChatGPT's Mac app. And Nvidia put a 64GB version of its DGX Spark mini PC up for $4,999, which is $1,000 more than the 128GB model cost when it launched a year ago. 789

Still open: Amazon did not say whether the NDA pledge covers its contractors, the change applies going forward and past agreements will not be revisited, and Amazon did not commit to forgoing local tax breaks the way Microsoft has. Google, Meta and Oracle did not answer the Wall Street Journal's questions about their own data center NDAs.

"Built Together" is an original rap song and music video built from those facts.