Amazon, Microsoft drop data center NDAs amid backlash

For years, data center negotiations played out in a legal gray zone where elected officials - not just corporate vendors - were required to sign away their right to discuss deal terms publicly. In Louisiana, at least five state senators, the Rapides Parish assessor, and members of a state industrial development board signed nondisclosure agreements in December 2024 and January 2025 to discuss Applied Digital's $3.6 billion 'Delta Forge 1' data center in Boyce - a project that circulated internally under the code names 'Project Lightning' and 'Project Pixel' ^[1]. A sociology professor's public-records requests later found NDAs in 25 of 31 surveyed Louisiana and Virginia data center projects, and at least 54 NDAs signed by Louisiana elected officials alone since Governor Jeff Landry took office in early 2024 ^[1].

Legal and transparency experts argue the practice is a structural problem, not just a PR one. Dan Golding, CTO of Appleby Strategy Group, said binding elected officials to secrecy undermines representative government: 'Attempting to force elected officials to sign NDAs is generally a bad idea... It sort of subverts the democratic process' ^[2]. David Cuillier of the University of Florida's Freedom of Information Project frames the secrecy as a deliberate leverage tactic: 'Information is power, and these folks...want to control information closely so they have an advantage' ^[1]. Even developers who relied on NDAs concede the optics are bad - Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins said 'I would love to get away from the NDA part because it just feels sneaky to people' ^[1], while West Feliciana Parish President Kenny Havard noted he closed a $10 billion data center deal with no NDA at all ^[1].

Amazon's and Microsoft's reversals did not happen in a vacuum. More than 100 data center moratoriums are currently under consideration across U.S. markets, including a one-year statewide permit moratorium in New York, directly threatening the pace of planned AI infrastructure buildout ^[3]. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has described the broader backlash in stark terms, calling it 'fundamentally a crisis of trust' ^[3]- language that frames NDAs less as a legal footnote and more as the symbolic center of community anger.

Legislators are not waiting for voluntary reform to prove itself. Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and Tom Barrett (R-MI) have introduced the federal 'No Secrets for Data Centers Act,' which would void NDAs tied to government subsidies, with similar state-level bills advancing in Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Ohio ^[4]. Microsoft moved first, publishing its Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan in January 2026 and pledging to identify and terminate existing NDAs with local governments worldwide ^[5]- with Amazon following suit roughly nine months later, in October 2026.

Amazon paired its NDA reversal with a five-year, $1 billion-plus 'Built Together' commitment covering education, job training, and energy affordability in communities hosting its data centers, estimating more than 300,000 students could gain access to community college and workforce certificate programs over that period ^[6]. AWS also issued a separate 'Data Center Commitment' pledging that its facilities will not drive up local electricity bills and that it will publish annual energy and water use figures ^[3].

That pledge arrives against a backdrop of real financial anxiety: a watchdog group attributed a 76% year-over-year electricity price increase on one of America's largest power grids primarily to data centers ^[3]- the kind of concrete, recurring cost that a one-time community fund does not directly offset. That gap - between a symbolic transparency policy and the recurring cost of a monthly electricity bill - leaves the 'Built Together' framing addressing a goodwill question while the structural grid-capacity question remains open.

Even sympathetic industry observers are doubtful that dropping NDAs resolves the underlying conflict. TechCrunch's Anthony Ha called it a necessary but insufficient step: 'I don't think that getting rid of the NDAs automatically is going to make the people who opposed these data centers be like, Great, let's do it' ^[7]. Colleague Rebecca Bellan noted that even moratoriums don't bite much in practice, since 'these data centers aren't coming online for the next two, three, four, five years' anyway ^[7]- meaning transparency on deal terms does little to address the multi-year construction, water, and power impacts communities actually experience.

The reform also has built-in limits. Microsoft's own policy retains exceptions for genuine trade secrets, including detailed datacenter design specifications and security controls required for permitting ^[5]- meaning 'no NDAs' does not mean full disclosure of everything a community might want to know. Whether ending NDAs shifts public sentiment or simply removes one easily-criticized practice while leaving the deeper economic grievances untouched is likely to be tested community by community over the next several moratorium cycles.