Operation Tulip: Inside Facebook's Secretive Push To Build Holland's Biggest Data Center [View all]

By the time the villagers knew Facebook was coming to town, it was already too late. Three weeks later their local councilors in the idyllic Dutch hamlet of Zeewolde voted 11–8 to rezone a swath of fertile farming land half the size of Central Park and hand it to Facebook to build its “hyperscale” data center — the largest in Holland.

The local councilors, including those who voted in favor of the data center, engaged with the company for almost two years prior to the vote — but without knowing that “Tulip,” the mysterious entity they’d been negotiating with, was Facebook. In fact, the councilors were among the last to know, finding out only after Facebook issued a press release revealing Tulip’s true identity ahead of the vote.

Facebook’s demand for secrecy around its data center in the Netherlands is the latest example of Big Tech’s aggressive but covert strategy to squeeze concessions from local governments. The veil of secrecy minimizes public scrutiny and backlash, often until it is too late.

“It is very strange. Everything is normally very transparent — but with data centers, it is like a big black mystic box,” said Lars Ruiter, a former municipal councilor from Hollands Kroon, who told BuzzFeed News that his village found itself in a nearly identical situation in 2017 with a secret Microsoft data center project.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/operation-tulip-inside-facebooks-secretive-push-to-build?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4