Russian firms plan to move data centres underground to evade drone strikes
What happened
On 4 November 2026, Ars Technica reported that Ukrainian drone strikes damaged facilities housing AI supercomputers in Russia and disrupted cloud services for millions of users. Russian technology companies are now stepping up efforts to harden and conceal data centres. State telecoms company Rostelcom and nickel-palladium miner Norilsk discussed the possibility of moving some data centres underground; local officials have also proposed building data centres inside open-pit coal mines and disguising them with a green park above. The Kremlin has meanwhile asked data centre owners to reserve computing capacity for national emergency needs and has authorised the use of overseas data centres if necessary. The relocation and camouflage plans remain under discussion and planning, and the report gave no specific implementation timetable.
Written by AI from the reports · updated 3 h ago
Timeline
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- Ars Technica · AIUkraine’s drone strikes spur hasty Russian plans for underground data centers
Russia tries to fix exposed digital infrastructure as data center war backfires.
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