Shut up and take our money: Amazon plows $1B into quashing datacenter dissent

Faced with growing opposition to datacenters from residents who don't want the bit barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years to indoctrinate the public. The company announced the investment in a whataboutism-packed blog post aimed at convincing readers datacenters are not as bad as they've been led to believe, and that if the common folk don't get in line and support their development, the nation could be left in the dust. The program aims to invest in education, job training, local infrastructure improvements, and sustainability initiatives in communities home to Amazon datacenters. "This build out is so important geopolitically that there are widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about datacenters to trick us into slowing down," the e-tailer turned cloud titan wrote. "Right now there are over 100 datacenter moratoriums being considered across the country. …