NDAs

Mason County — a rural community in northeastern Kentucky bordering the Ohio River — is among dozens of U.S. localities weighing data center projects that residents say have been shrouded in secrecy.
Michael Swensen for NBC News

NDA, aka bribes, are cropping up everywhere in support of companies' attempts to install, in surreptitious fashion, data centers into towns that don't want them. 

On a March afternoon in Mason County, Kentucky, Dr. Timothy Grosser and his son Andy sat across the table from three men who came with an offer: $10 million for the 250-acre farm where they’d lived and worked for nearly four decades.

That’s 35 times what Grosser bought his land for in 1988 and significantly more than what others in the area had sold their land for recently. But there was a catch — it wasn’t clear who was funding the offer. One of the men said he represented a “Fortune 100 company” that wanted the property for an industrial development, but he refused to say what kind, which company or even his own name.

Instead, he pulled out a non-disclosure agreement.

Grosser said the contract would prevent him from discussing the project’s details with any third parties in exchange for limited information about its purpose, timeline and size. It didn’t disclose the company’s name, which could be discussed only after the company publicly announced its participation in the project.

“We refused to sign it,” Grosser said. “I’m not selling my farm for any amount of money.”

Dr. Timothy Grosser on his farm in Mason County on Oct. 20.Michael Swensen for NBC News

Five months after Grosser turned them down, local officials said at a public meeting that Mason County was being scouted as a location for a new data center development.

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