Shut Up and Take Our Money: Amazon Dedicates Over $1 Billion to Canceling Dissent in Data Centers

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You’ll love the data center! Truly, you will rejoice in the data center house!

Facing growing opposition to data centers from residents who don’t want small barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to indoctrinate the public. The company announced the investment in a blog post full of rhetoric aimed at convincing readers that data centers aren’t as bad as they’ve been led to believe, and that if ordinary people don’t fall in line and support their development, the nation could be left in the dust.

The program aims to invest in education, job training, local infrastructure improvements, and sustainability initiatives in the communities that house Amazon data centers.

“This construct is so geopolitically significant that there are numerous reports that various countries are intentionally spreading misinformation to the United States about data centers to trick us into slowing down,” the online retailer turned cloud titan wrote. “Currently, more than 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the country. If these measures are adopted, the United States could lose out in this race, and the consequences would last for generations.”

If Jeff Bezos’ cash cow is to be believed, data centers will transform the U.S. economy much like highway construction did in the 1950s. But that can’t happen, Amazon says, if Americans block the development of these little barns because of misguided fears.

The blog post highlights four of these data center fears, which Amazon considers to be “myths,” despite numerous reports suggesting otherwise.

Who needs water?

The first “myth” is the fact that data centers consume an excessive amount of water. Bit barns typically use evaporative coolers that use water to release heat generated by the facility into the atmosphere. These cooling towers use less energy than dry coolers or refrigerant systems, but accordingly remove water from local watersheds.

According to Amazon, citizens should actually be more concerned about water consumption at golf courses, which they say use 200 times more water than all of Amazon’s data centers. This argument might be more convincing if people didn’t like golf courses. But it does, and the lesser evil argument works much better when one of those evils isn’t hugely popular.

Amazon also attempted to refute claims that a typical data center consumes five million gallons per day, arguing that its facilities are much more efficient using just 13,000 gallons per day, the equivalent of 42 U.S. homes. But this leaves out an important detail.

It is possible to build data centers that do not consume large amounts of water, but these facilities often consume large amounts of energy as a result. Most gas, nuclear, coal and anything that uses steam to turn a turbine also uses water. In other words, almost all large-scale electricity generation methods use water, directly or indirectly.

And despite Amazon’s attempts to minimize the impact of the data centers, nearby residents have good reason to be concerned. Earlier this year, it was reported that a data center, which was not operated by Amazon, had quietly sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water and the only reason anyone discovered the problem was because local residents began complaining about unusually low water pressure.

We won’t let data centers drive up your electricity bill or poison your air.

Amazon also tried to allay concerns that data centers could leave nearby residents footing the bill for their massive power consumption. The company argues that rates are rising because the U.S. grid is old and responsible building builders are working with utilities to ensure they pay their fair share for the additional capacity and infrastructure upgrades needed to support them.

What hasn’t been addressed is why people might be concerned about rising rates. One reason utilities and power plant operators are so conservative is that they have already been burned by speculative markets. If new power plants are built to meet demand that never materializes, taxpayers could be stuck with the bill. Amazon and others agreeing to pay higher rates could help, but only if they consume an appreciable share of the capacity they’ve convinced utilities to build. An empty data center doesn’t generate much power.

Speaking of energy, Amazon has also tried to minimize the impact of data centers on air quality due to their reliance on diesel backup generators. “The truth is that data center generators almost never work,” the company wrote.

Amazon also argued that these generators are subject to strict permit requirements that dictate how long they can run. This could be more reassuring if data centers located in power-constrained regions were not subsequently granted permission to exceed these limits.

And, as we saw with Elon Musk’s Colossus supercomputer, temporary gas turbines can be deployed when the local grid can’t support the load. That hasn’t sat well with residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, while the NAACP is suing xAI over allegedly unpermitted turbines in Mississippi.

Amazon may say it has a better track record than most, but that doesn’t mean the community’s concerns are misplaced.

But think about taxes

Finally, Amazon says people don’t realize the magnitude of the economic impact data centers have on their community.

“Data center operators are often the largest taxpayer in a community, with upfront payments regularly exceeding entire annual municipal budgets during the first year of construction,” the company claimed. “For example, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, the taxes Amazon will pay to the county are estimated to be more than $3 billion.”

The subtext is that by enacting data center moratoriums, communities are depriving themselves of billions of dollars in taxes. Then again, if tax revenue from these facilities is so great, it raises the question of why Amazon needs to spend more than $1 billion over five years to sweeten the deal for the communities that host its small barns. ®

Updated October 3, 2:47 p.m. GMT to reflect the fact that Amazon actually said it would spend more than 1 billion dollars.