Amazon has announced an investment of one billion dollars over five years to address local tensions related to the expansion of its data centers. The company claims that the criticisms stem from foreign disinformation campaigns. However, the Stand.Earth organization strongly criticizes this initiative, calling it a damage control operation, highlighting the lack of transparency and the disastrous environmental impact of a large natural gas power plant funded by the hyperscaler. The financial aid proposed by Amazon remains trivial compared to the company's massive investments and the real pollution issues. Amazon recently announced a commitment of more than one billion dollars over five years intended for communities near its data centers in the United States. The cloud giant has committed to addressing their impacts on electricity and water consumption. Amazon, Meta, Oracle and other data center operators are facing increasing criticism due to the catastrophic environmental impact of their infrastructure. According to Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the communities near their facilities will themselves decide "the distribution of these funds between education, vocational training, energy affordability, water and energy preservation, and other local priorities." Amazon also promises that the deployment of its infrastructure will not lead to an increase in electricity bills or the depletion of local water supplies. The company states that it aims for a positive water balance by 2030, while ensuring that three quarters of its projects already achieve this goal. In addition, Amazon is ending the use of controversial non-disclosure agreements during the construction of its new data centers. This initiative has been praised for the transparency it brings. According to a blog post published on Friday by Matt Garman, the company has already invested more than one billion dollars in communities hosting a large number of data centers over the past three years. However, data center critics claim that these measures are far from compensating for the negative impacts of data centers. Amazon's defensive strategy against technological competition. The Amazon executive has also warned against the spread of what he calls "disinformation about the impact of data centers on the environment and electricity prices." Referring to theories similar to those of American President Donald Trump on "foreign disinformation campaigns," Matt Garman claims that adversaries of the United States are trying to "trap us in order to slow us down." Presenting its commitments, Amazon is trying to convince the public that "the citizen opposition to data centers is based on counter-factuals." In addition, Matt Garman mentioned the dangers related to more than 100 moratoriums on these data centers currently under consideration across the country. He emphasizes the need to stop calls for moratoriums to prevent American AI from falling behind China. Environmental impact concerns related to data centers. Amazon's commitment comes as data centers, which are the pillars of AI and cloud computing, have become a hot political issue ahead of the mid-term elections, with Big Tech companies racing to invest more in the expansion of these information infrastructure. Small data centers have existed for decades and generally go unnoticed by residents. But the explosion of AI-based chatbots has given rise to data centers of unprecedented size for practically all cities. Some of them surpass football stadiums and factories, and consume more energy than small cities, a construction scale that worries. Amazon stated in July that it now plans to allocate 220 billion dollars to investment expenses in 2026, including for data centers and other technological investments. This figure is higher than its previous estimate of 200 billion dollars. Donald Trump has expressed support for the construction of new data centers, but voters are becoming increasingly skeptical. About six Americans out of ten are in favor of limiting the number of new data centers that can be built, including most Democrats and Republicans. Some American politicians who supported data centers have not been re-elected by residents. In addition, a majority of Americans say they are "extremely" or "very" concerned about the impact of data centers on electricity prices or water supply in the communities where they are built.