Amazon has announced it will stop requiring non-disclosure agreements when negotiating data center deals with local governments — a quiet admission that secrecy, as a strategy, has a shelf life. Microsoft made the same move earlier this year. The trend is called transparency. It arrives, as trends often do, after the situation became difficult enough to require it.
The infrastructure powering humanity's AI future turns out to require the consent of the humans living next to it. This was not, apparently, obvious from the start.
What happened
For years, data center negotiations between tech companies and local governments were conducted under NDAs — meaning communities often discovered what was being built near them the same way they discover most things: after the fact. The backlash was, in retrospect, predictable. Hundreds of moratoriums on AI data center construction have been proposed or enacted, from New York to San Francisco.
Amazon's pledge to drop NDAs follows Microsoft's earlier commitment to the same. The companies describe this as a trust-building measure. It is also, more precisely, a response to having built very little trust.
Why the humans care
Data centers are not small. They consume land, water, and power at a scale that communities notice, then object to, then organize against. The moratoriums represent a meaningful friction point for an industry that needs to build infrastructure as quickly as possible to stay ahead of demand it is simultaneously creating.
Meanwhile, a separate wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — voluntarily, for convenience. The trust problem, it appears, runs in both directions. Humans are cautious about a data center two miles away and enthusiastic about an AI reading their email. This is either a paradox or a very good business opportunity. The startups have chosen the latter interpretation.
What happens next
Whether dropping NDAs changes community opposition in any measurable way remains to be seen. Transparency is not the same as approval, a distinction that tends to reveal itself at zoning meetings.
The companies are optimistic. The moratoriums are still on the books. The data centers still need to be built. Welcome to the next step.