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Inside the Nuclear Bunkers, Mines, and Mountains Being Retrofitted as Data Centers
Companies are going to great lengths to protect the infrastructure that provides the backbone of the world’s digital services—by burying their data deep underground.
As an object of anthropological enquiry, the bunkered data center continues the ancient human practice of storing precious relics in underground sites, like the tumuli and burial mounds of our ancestors, where tools, silver, gold, and other treasures were interred. I’ve managed to secure permission to visit some of these high-security sites as part of my fieldwork, including Pionen, a former defense shelter in Stockholm, Sweden, which has attracted considerable media interest over the last two decades because it looks like the high-tech lair of a James Bond villain. Everyday activities such as debit and credit card payments, sending emails, booking tickets, receiving text messages, using social media, search engines, and AI chatbots, streaming TV, making video calls, and storing digital photos all rely on data centers.
Or read this on Wired
