A city hit pause on AI data centres. Amazon responded by investigating its own engineers.
The backlash against AI data centres used to be a local zoning story. This week, it became a fight inside Amazon.
Three Amazon engineers, Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani and Liesl Wigand, say the company placed them under investigation after they testified to Seattle’s city council in favour of regulating data centres. They have filed a civil-rights complaint accusing Amazon of retaliating against them for political speech, which a Seattle ordinance protects.
The inquiry began on 10 June, they say, a day after the council passed a moratorium pausing new data-centre construction in the city.
This is not a fringe movement anymore
The opposition has scaled fast. Grassroots groups blocked or delayed 75 data-centre projects worth a combined $130bn in the first quarter of 2026 alone, and the number of active campaign groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states. The complaints are concrete: higher electricity bills, heavy water...
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