Balancing the need to know with the need to get shovels in the ground is causing friction in communities across the country

feature Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins said when his company decides on a location for a datacenter, he asks town officials to sign non-disclosure agreements to stop politicians from leaking insider information.

“Each one of these projects is still a big deal for us,” Cummins told The Register. “When we do NDAs, it's really specifically about trading in our public shares. We’re trying to protect people from the insider trading laws of the country because not everyone knows that, 'Hey, I've got insider information on a company,' and then they go trade in it, and then you get in trouble.”

The practice is increasingly common among tech companies, with Amazon frequently criticized for using them. It's become controversial for locking voters out of discussions about large, community-shaping projects that sometimes bring jobs, but can also come with tax breaks, environmental impacts, and energy and water usage ...