Thieves Are Now Targeting AI Data Center Construction Sites for Copper and Expensive Equipment

# Thieves Are Now Targeting AI Data Center Construction Sites for Copper and Expensive Equipment Source: [https://www.vice.com/en/article/thieves-are-now-targeting-ai-data-center-construction-sites-for-copper-and-expensive-equipment/](https://www.vice.com/en/article/thieves-are-now-targeting-ai-data-center-construction-sites-for-copper-and-expensive-equipment/) Americans don’t seem like they’d be particularly broken up if the data center craze gripping corporate America were stopped dead in its tracks\. According to[recent polling](https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx), data center hate is one of the few things capable of uniting people across the political spectrum\. At this point, the only people who’d genuinely miss them—besides the tech CEOs insisting we need them for reasons they can’t explain—might be the thieves making a fortune stealing the mountains of copper and equipment headed to their construction sites\. According to[*Business Insider*](https://www.businessinsider.com/cargo-thieves-stole-million-of-data-center-supplies-sheriff-says-2026-6), investigators recently recovered two stolen trailers near Chicago containing roughly $1\.3 million worth of data center supplies, including $300,000 in copper wire stolen in Alabama, and another trailer carrying $1 million in infrastructure equipment taken from Florida\. It’s a booming industry, with the US Department of Homeland Security estimating that cargo theft costs businesses about $35 billion a year, and the AI boom is now fueling a whole new niche within that black market\. ## Videos by VICE ## Thieves Stole $1\.3 Million in Data Center Supplies as the AI Construction Boom Keeps Growing Wherever data centers are being built, the thieves follow\. We do live in a land of opportunity, after all, and what is a data center if not a giant opportunity to steal a lot of copper wiring to offset all the water the data center is going to be stealing from us? The same race to build ever\-larger[data centers](https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-ai-boom-is-taking-over-the-u-s-power-grid-and-this-map-shows-where-its-happening/)that has sparked public backlash over energy use, water consumption, and the menace they pose to nearby communities has also made an entirely new criminal economy\. Every data center needs truckloads of valuable materials before the servers can be crammed in\. Every new shipment is just another opportunity thieves can seize\. While the AI revolution threatens to kill countless jobs, leaving potentially millions of Americans in the lurch, maybe all those future jobless Americans can turn to the booming data center theft industry\. Maybe AI*is*a job creator?