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 their 250-acre farm. 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,” but refused to say which company or even his own name. Instead, he pulled out a non-disclosure agreement. Five months after Grosser turned down the offer, local officials said that the county was being scouted as a location for a new data center development.

The construction of hyperscale data centers — giant facilities that house servers and computing resources — is surging nationwide. An NBC News review of over 30 data center proposals across 14 states found that in a majority of cases, local officials signed NDAs. The common but controversial aspect of the multibillion-dollar data center boom often leaves neighbors searching for answers about the future of their communities.