Inside the Nuclear Bunkers, Mines, and Mountains Being Retrofitted as Data Centers

"It's a sunny June day in southeast England. I'm driving along a quiet, rural road that stretches through the Kent countryside. The sun flashes through breaks in the hedgerow, offering glimpses of verdant crop fields and old farmhouses. Thick hawthorn and brambles make it difficult to see the 10-foot-high razor-wire fence that encloses a large grassy mound. You'd never suspect that 100 feet beneath the ground, a high-tech cloud computing facility is whirring away, guarding the most valuable commodity of our age: digital data."

"This subterranean data center is located in a former nuclear bunker that was constructed in the early 1950s as a command-and-control center for the Royal Air Force's radar network. You can still see the decaying concrete plinths that the radar dish once sat upon. Personnel stationed in the bunker would have closely watched their screens for signs of nuclear-missile-carrying aircraft."

Companies increasingly locate data centers underground to protect critical digital infrastructure. Former Cold War nuclear bunkers have been repurposed into ultra-secure cloud facilities operated by cybersecurity firms. Thick hedgerows, razor-wire fencing, and deep burial conceal high-tech computing equipment located roughly 100 feet beneath the surface. These secured sites guard digital data against physical threats and reflect broader anxieties about data loss and backup practices. The subterranean storage echoes ancient traditions of interring valuable items in burial mounds. Ethnographic attention to extreme data storage highlights the lengths taken to preserve access to the backbone of modern digital services.

Read at WIRED