Amazon drops NDAs in data center talks with local governments, following Microsoft

Sean O'Kane said on TechCrunch's Equity podcast that residents sometimes know a data center is planned and do not know who will use or occupy it ^[11]. He traced much of the worry about property values, electricity bills and water use to projects "negotiated essentially in secret" ^[16].

He has seen the pattern before. In the mid-2010s, he recalled, Uber used secret negotiation with local governments heavily, including talks with a city outside Orlando over tax subsidies for rides to public transit ^[12]. Because of the secrecy, O'Kane said, "you could just see Uber getting really comfortable with asking for a lot of other stuff, too" ^[13].

Amazon's post pitches data centers as good for communities ^[2]. The NDA change sits in the middle of that pitch, and O'Kane said it was "sort of buried in the blog post" ^[3]. TechCrunch's write-up states the policy in one sentence ^[1]. It does not quote the post, give a start date or say whether talks already under way are covered.

What teams tell themselves, in O'Kane's account, is that people cannot picture a use for the product. "We've seen, through a lot of the controversy and backlash to AI and data centers, that the industry just does a really poor job explaining itself, and that they are obviously and constantly frustrated with the fact that most people can't envision a world in which this stuff is useful for them," he said ^[14]. On the NDA change itself he was cautious: "We'll see if it actually does have any positive effect, but people are pretty entrenched right now," he said ^[15].

The panel split on whether the backlash will slow construction. Rebecca Bellan was skeptical that the recent spate of moratoriums will have a lasting effect, because they only last a year or two ^[6]. In her words, "these data centers aren't coming online for the next two, three, four, five years" ^[7]. The longest pause she cites equals the shortest build window, two years ^[10].

Anthony Ha countered that backers "definitely seem worried" ^[8]. He pointed to New York, where the pause on permits for large projects runs until the state finishes an environmental review that is expected to take a year ^[5]. Ha said the "we need to take the time to study this" framing leaves officials room to decide later that data centers are great ^[9].

For a county staffer or a siting lead who has to put a negotiation in front of a council on Monday and defend it on Friday, we think any NDA-free pledge should be tested on two points. The first is whether the commitment covers the tenant's name or only the project's existence. The second is whether disclosure comes before the first public vote or after approval.

Crossed, those give four cells. Only a tenant named before the vote gives residents the name while there is still a decision to argue about. In the other three cells the name arrives after the decision or not at all. The tradeoff falls on the company, which gives up private early talks to get into that first cell.