Ukraine’s drone strikes spur hasty Russian plans for underground data centers

Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged Russian data centers housing AI supercomputers and disrupted cloud services, prompting Russian tech companies to scramble to harden and hide facilities underground. The Kremlin is requiring data center owners to reserve computing capacity for emergency state needs and has authorized possible use of foreign data centers. State-owned telecom Rostelecom has raised moving some data centers underground in talks with Norilsk, according to Vedomosti, and a regional governor proposed building data centers in open-pit coal mines with parks above as camouflage.