Can the AI industry persuade data center opponents by getting rid of NDAs?
The NDA point is the most useful thing in this debate, because it gets at why local fights over data centers get so ugly so fast. When a community is told a massive facility is coming but can't learn the power draw, the water use, or the noise profile, the vacuum fills with worst-case assumptions. I've seen this pattern in infrastructure fights of all kinds, and secrecy rarely reads as prudence to neighbors; it reads as something to hide.
That said, dropping NDAs is not a clean fix. The industry has real reasons to guard certain details, from supply chain contracts to security, and some of the loudest opponents won't be won over by a PowerPoint either way. The moratoriums are partly about resources and zoning, and transparency doesn't change how many megawatts a site needs.
Where I land is that this is a genuine communication failure, but communication alone won't settle it. The industry has to give communities something concrete, like binding commitments on water recycling or grid contributions, not just openness. I'd want to know whether any of the projects under moratorium actually tried that, and what happened.