A group of Amazon engineers spoke out against unfettered data center construction, calling out their own employer for pouring money into AI infrastructure while slashing headcount. The employees pointed out the hypocrisy between the company spending billions to build these infrastructure projects, all the while laying off thousands in anticipation of the AI agents these data centers would power to replace them.
“It’s been reported that this year, Amazon is spending $200 billion on capital, with most of it going to data centers and AI,” Patrick Schloesser, a software engineer at Amazon Web Services, said at a Seattle Land Use and Sustainability Committee hearing on Wednesday. He was one of three Amazon employees who made comments supporting increased regulation of local data center development.
“Microsoft is spending $190 billion. Meanwhile, the leaders at my company have laid off 30,000 corporate employees in the last eight months,” Schloesser added. “What that tells me is that Big Tech is desperate to build as much compute capacity as it can, as fast as it can.”
Seattle City Council ultimately voted in favor of a yearlong moratorium of local data center construction following public outcry over proposals to build five large-scale complexes around the city. The moratorium will give the city more time to regulate AI infrastructure growth in the area.
Amazon said it had no plans to construct data centers within Seattle city limits and that it is committed to investing in local economic developments and improving water and energy efficiency in its projects.
“We respect our colleagues’ right to voice their opinions,” Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan said in a statement to Fortune. “We engage regularly with community stakeholders to understand local priorities and address concerns transparently, supporting both technological innovation and the specific needs of each region where we operate.”
Public reactions to the AI spending blitz
Hyperscalers like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft, have poured $700 billion into AI infrastructure this year alone, part of a greater AI spending blitz expected to reach $7 trillion by 2030. In April, Amazon reiterated its $200 billion in AI capital expenditures for the rest of this year.
As data center spending balloons, tech companies have cut costs elsewhere, including in their workforces. Beyond Amazon’s layoffs—which the company attributed to the need to decrease bureaucracy and increase efficiency—Meta dismissed 10% of its staff last month after announcing earlier this year it would double its AI capex of $72 billion from 2025. Oracle’s staff reduction (estimates put those affected by layoffs at anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 employees) this spring coincided with the company’s disclosure of $248 billion in future data center lease obligations.
The environmental concerns associated with data center construction—including noise pollution and excessive water usage—has further spoiled public support for AI infrastructure expansion. A recent Gallup poll found 70% of Americans opposed data center construction in their local areas, including nearly half who are strongly opposed.
The controversies surrounding the AI buildout have spurred legislators across 14 states to consider banning data center development, and a dozen are weighing moratorium of the infrastructure’s construction. Monterey Park, California, a city of 60,000 people located just outside of Los Angeles, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a permanent data center ban on Tuesday, with 86% of the votes supporting the restriction.
Still, public dissent hasn’t always translated to Big Tech pulling back on infrastructure expansion plans. A $16 billion data center for OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate AI infrastructure initiative in Saline Township, Michigan, ultimately continued, even after the plans were rejected by the town’s board and planning commission. The data developer sued, and the town settled, ultimately paving a way for construction to move forward.
Amazon workers’ data center pushback
Amazon senior software engineer Liesl Wigand argued at the city hearing that the power to determine data center expansion should lie with local entities.
“Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should be setting the terms for data center buildout,” Wigand said. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle to win the AI race.”
Schloesser, an engineer at Amazon for the past six years, said tech companies should commit to offsetting the energy they consume with renewable energy in order to support the U.S.’s weathered grid system.
“You’ve got to provide good jobs building these things, and you’ve got to pay a new tax that funds city jobs every time you conduct a large layoff,” he said.
Big Tech’s environmental pacts
Amazon said it’s committed to being “water positive” by 2030, and is 53% of the way toward the goal of returning more water to communities than it uses for data centers. According to the company, water is used for cooling its data centers in the Americas for 10% of the year. Amazon has 24 facilities using 100% reclaimed water.
Tech companies including Google and Microsoft have similarly made pledges toward net-zero emissions by 2030. This week at the Microsoft Build 2026 event, CEO Satya Nadella said the company’s latest generation of data centers had the equivalent annual water consumption of a single restaurant.
Still, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an internal advocacy group that includes Wigand and Schloesser, have advocated for the employer to make a more concerted effort in putting guardrails on its own AI infrastructure expansion. In an open letter published in Nov. 2025, the group called on the e-commerce giant to power all data centers with 100% local renewable resources and increase AI working groups with participation from non-managers.
“We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth,” they wrote.
Subscribe to Fortune Gulf Brief. Every Tuesday, this new newsletter delivers clear-eyed, authoritative intelligence on the deals, decisions, policies, and power shifts shaping one of the world’s most consequential regions, written for the people who need to act on it.