AWS CEO Drops NDAs With Government Agencies and Defends Data Centers in Backlash Response
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said in an October 2026 blog post that the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies as it seeks approval for new data center projects, part of a broader effort to address community concerns over data center expansion.
NDAs have become a flashpoint in the backlash against data centers. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has said transparency is the most common complaint she hears, citing a pattern of projects announced after permits are secured and local officials signing NDAs before neighbors learn about a proposal. New York has imposed a one-year moratorium on large data center permits, and Garman said more than 100 similar measures are under consideration across the U.S. He warned that enacting them could be "writing its own losing ticket" in the race, with consequences lasting generations.
Garman also pushed back on what he called four myths about data centers: excessive water consumption, higher electricity costs, heavy pollution, and a lack of community benefits. Citing an Amazon report, he said direct data center water consumption accounts for only 0.5% of all industrial water use in the U.S., "orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries." On electricity, he argued that rates have only risen in some states with heavy data center density, while other states have seen declines or slower growth, blaming aging grids rather than data centers. An independent watchdog, however, recently attributed a 76% year-over-year price increase on America's largest electrical grid mainly to data centers.
On pollution, Garman said critics focus on the maximum emissions allowed under permits, noting that data center generators are idle 99.9% of the time, running roughly 10 hours per year for maintenance testing. He also said Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion over the past three years to U.S. communities where it has a meaningful data center presence. The response may not fully ease suspicion: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said the AI backlash is fundamentally a crisis of trust, and skeptics often respond to tech companies' arguments with "I don't believe them."
