Polymarket, citing the Financial Times, says AI data centers may soon need blast resistant concrete, drone defenses and missile protection
JUST IN: AI data centers could soon require blast-resistant concrete, anti-drone defenses, & missile protection as attacks on computing infrastructure escalate worldwide. — Financial Times
Context
If data centers become military targets, building and insuring AI infrastructure gets more expensive and slower.
This is a secondhand post: Polymarket, a prediction market, summarized a Financial Times piece without linking it. The piece is an opinion column by Chris Miller, author of the book Chip War, published October 19.
- Financial Times: Data centres need protection from drone warfare
- Financial Times: How Ukraine's data centre strikes threw Russia into turmoil
- Ctech, via Reuters: Iran war forces UAE to rethink a giant AI data center project
- Advance Intelligence: Iran's security chief threatens data centers around the Strait of Hormuz
Deep dive
On October 19, Polymarket posted that AI data centers could soon require blast resistant concrete, anti drone defenses and missile protection as attacks on computing infrastructure escalate worldwide, crediting the Financial Times.
The source is a Financial Times opinion column by Chris Miller, the historian who wrote Chip War. Its summary says AI infrastructure designs may now need to incorporate blast resistant concrete, jamming gear and missile defense systems. Polymarket's wording that data centers will require these measures states the column's argument more firmly than a prediction.
The column points to recent attacks. The Financial Times separately reported on October 14 that Ukrainian strikes on data centers run by Yandex disrupted services in Russia, from email and taxi apps to electronic key fobs for Moscow apartment buildings.
In September, Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates was revising a planned 5 gigawatt AI campus after Iranian missile and drone attacks on Gulf states, which Reuters said damaged two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and one in Bahrain in March. People familiar with the plans told Reuters that officials were considering spreading the project across several sites, building some facilities underground, and adding air defenses and blast resistant concrete. G42 told Reuters the work was progressing as planned.
What to expect next
Watch whether data center developers and their insurers start to price in physical security measures such as hardened buildings and air defenses, and whether governments begin to treat AI data centers formally as critical infrastructure. The UAE's redesign of its AI campus will be an early test of what such protection costs. Also watch for further strikes on data centers in active conflicts, which would make the column's argument harder to dismiss.