亚马逊网络服务（AWS）首席执行官马特·加曼表示，该公司已停止在与政府机构的业务往来中使用保密协议（NDA），以寻求在新建数据中心方面的批准。

加曼的声明只是其一篇较长博客文章中的一句话，他在文中试图反驳公众对数据中心的广泛疑虑，并论证数据中心实际上对社区有益。

保密协议是更广泛的数据中心反对浪潮中的一个重要组成部分。例如，环保活动家艾琳·布罗科维奇最近表示，她听到的关于数据中心的首要投诉是缺乏透明度，这些项目通常遵循一种常见模式：“在已获得许可后才宣布的项目、不回复电话的开发商、以及在邻居得知项目正在考虑之中前就签署了保密协议的当地官员。”

作为对这种反对浪潮的反应，纽约州宣布暂停大型数据中心的许可证一年，而据加曼称，美国目前有超过100个数据中心禁令正在被审议。

“如果这些措施得以实施，美国可能会在这场竞赛中写下自己的失败票，其后果将持续几代人，”加曼声称，“作为一个国家，我们承担不起让自己陷入这种境地的代价。”

加曼还试图破除他所说的关于数据中心的四大误区：即数据中心消耗过多水资源、推高电力成本、排放大量污染，以及不为社区提供任何好处。

引用亚马逊关于其自身用水量的报告，加曼表示，“直接的数据中心用水量”仅占美国所有工业用水量的0.5%，“比高尔夫球场、杏仁种植和许多其他行业少几个数量级。”

英伟达（Nvidia）最近表示，其新的冷却系统消除了数据中心内“几乎全部的水使用”，但这些说法——就像亚马逊的说法一样——似乎忽略了发电和芯片制造过程中涉及的更广泛的水资源使用。科学家还表示，他们需要独立研究数据中心的用水和能源使用情况，因为目前联邦或州政府对于科技公司如何报告此类数据没有任何要求。

至于电价，加曼表示，在拥有大量数据中心的一些州，电价确实有所上涨，而在其他州，电价则有所下降或至少增长更为缓慢。他辩称，“在能源价格上涨的情况下，主要原因通常是电网老旧，且在需求到来之前未得到投资和扩建。”

另一方面，一个独立监管机构最近表示，数据中心是美国最大电网同比价格上涨76%的主要罪魁祸首。

谈到污染问题——全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）目前正因此事起诉埃隆·马斯克的SpaceX/xAI——加曼抱怨批评者只关注数据中心许可证允许的最大排放量。例如，德克萨斯州一个计划中的亚马逊数据中心获准每年排放3300万吨二氧化碳，这比美国任何其他发电厂都多。

“事实是，数据中心的发电机几乎从不运行，”加曼说，“它们99.9%的时间处于闲置状态（每年仅运行约10小时，主要用于必要的维护测试）。”

至于社区利益，加曼在此处写道：“我们不再与我们在项目合作中的政府机构使用保密协议。”此外，他表示，“在过去三年中，亚马逊在我们拥有重要数据中心存在的美国各地社区贡献了超过10亿美元。”

这足以平息社区的疑虑吗？恐怕未必——Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫代伊（Dario Amodei）近日指出，对人工智能的抵制“本质上是一场信任危机”，人们普遍认为政府和科技公司总是在“策划新的手段来坑害他们”。同样，作家Jasmine Sun也注意到，当数据中心反对者面对科技公司的论点时，他们的回应通常是：“我不相信他们。”

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) in its dealings with government agencies as it seeks approval to build new data centers.

Garman’s statement is just one sentence in a longer blog post in which he tried to push back against widespread suspicion of data centers, and to make the case that they’re actually good for communities.

NDAs are a significant piece of the broader data center backlash. For example, environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently said that the number one complaint she’s heard about data centers is transparency , with these projects following a common pattern: “projects announced after permits are already secured, developers who don’t return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.”

As a result of that backlash, New York announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers , and according to Garman, there are more than 100 data center moratoriums currently being considered across the United States.

“If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations,” Garman claimed. “As a country, we can’t afford to find ourselves in that position.”

Garman also attempted to puncture what he said are four big myths around data centers: that they consume too much water, that they increase electricity costs, that they emit an enormous amount of pollution, and that they don’t provide any benefits to their communities.

Pointing to an Amazon report about its own water usage , Garman said that “direct data center water consumption” only accounts for 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, “orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries.”

Nvidia recently said its new cooling system eliminates “pretty much all water usage” inside the data center , but those claims — like Amazon’s — seem to ignore the broader water usage involved in electricity generation and chip manufacturing. Scientists have also said they need to study data centers’ water and energy usage independently , since there are no federal or state requirements around how tech companies report this data.

As for electricity rates, Garman said they’ve only gone up in some states with large numbers of data centers, while they’ve gone down or at least grown more slowly in others. And he argued, “In instances where energy rates are going up, it’s primarily because the grid is old and hasn’t been invested in and expanded before the demand arrived.”

On the other hand, an independent watchdog said recently data centers were the main culprit behind a 76% year-over-year price increase on America’s largest electrical grid.

When it comes to pollution — an issue that the NAACP is currently suing Elon Musk’s SpaceX/xAI over — Garman complained that critics focus on the maximum amount of pollution allowed under data center permits. For example, a planned Amazon data center in Texas is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is more than any other power plant in the United States.

“The truth is data center generators almost never run,” Garman said. “They’re idle 99.9% of the time (they run roughly 10 hours per year, mostly for required maintenance testing).”

As for the community benefits, this is where Garman wrote, “We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects.” Plus, he said, “Over the past three years, Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to communities across the U.S. in which we have a meaningful data center presence.”

Will this be enough to quell community suspicion? Perhaps not — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently argued that the AI backlash is “fundamentally a crisis of trust, ” where people assume governments and tech companies are always “cooking up some new way to screw them over.” Similarly, writer Jasmine Sun noted that when data center opponents are presented with the tech companies’ arguments, their response is usually, “I don’t believe them.”