Amazon has joined Microsoft in saying it will no longer use nondisclosure agreements while negotiating data-center projects with local governments, a shift that follows growing anger over how AI infrastructure has been planned behind closed doors.¹

The backlash did not emerge overnight. Across the country, local opposition has produced hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums, from New York to San Francisco, as residents question data centers’ effects on electricity bills, water consumption and property values.¹ The secrecy around negotiations has made those concerns harder to resolve: communities may know a facility is coming, but not necessarily who will occupy it or what commitments have been made.

On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha framed Amazon’s move as a necessary correction to that imbalance. “So much of that just really goes back to the fact that a lot of these projects are being negotiated essentially in secret,” he said, calling the end of NDAs a welcome development while warning that opponents are already entrenched.²

The panel did not treat the moratoriums as a decisive win for opponents. Rebecca Bellan noted that many pauses last only one or two years, while projects themselves may not come online for “two, three, four, five years”; zoning, funding and construction delays could outlast the political resistance.² Yet Ha argued that builders’ anxious reactions suggest the pressure is real, even if reviews can ultimately clear the way for projects.

Sean O’Kane identified the wider problem: an industry that assumes inevitability rather than earning consent. “The industry just does a really poor job explaining itself,” he said, particularly when people cannot see how AI will benefit them.²

That leaves Amazon’s pledge as a test rather than a resolution. Ending NDAs may open the door to public scrutiny, but it will not by itself answer the question driving the resistance: why should a community accept the trade-offs of the AI buildout?