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... Faced with growing opposition to datacenters from residents who don't want the bit barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest more than $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. If these measures are enacted, the US could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations."

If Jeff Bezos's cash cow is to be believed, datacenters will transform the US economy much like the buildout of the highway system did in the '50s. But that can't happen, Amazon argues, if Americans block the development of these bit barns over misguided fears. ...