The back and forth over data center development across the U.S. has a former Army special forces officer turned cybersecurity expert watching closely. Seth Krummrich, executive vice president at the international security firm Global Guardian told Military.com that data centers are vulnerable to security threats and planners need to be prepared and on alert.
“We have to look at data centers from a nation state perspective as being key targets against the United States and our allies around the world,” Krummrich, who spent 28 years as an Army special forces officer, said. “Besides drone or missile strikes, you’ve got all the cyber threat actors. It might be financially motivated. It might be from an intelligence perspective. It might be disrupting U.S. continuity. If someone takes down a data center, they can take out a lot.”
Krummrich said so much of the current discussion around data centers surrounds neighbor opposition over location, cost, environmental and community impacts, as well as the artificial intelligence that many data centers are expected to drive. But Krummrich believes the larger threat is to the data itself that runs through these centers and the disruption an attack could cause.
“We need to think of them as strategic assets. Look no further than the Iran War, when Iran deliberately struck Amazon’s data centers in Bahrain and the UAE, and the significant amount of damage that was carried out,” he said. “Bahrain is still offline. I think one of the three UAE data centers is still offline. They lost significant amounts of data, which affected corporate clients around the world.”
Trump Responds to Data Center Concerns
In response to growing data center concerns, President Trump has been dismissive on one hand, while taking action on the other. On Saturday, Trump announced he will appoint a czar over artificial intelligence and will also create an AI task force.
Meanwhile, during a call into a recent tech investment conference, Trump called data center opposition “a hoax” and added, “data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy.” Trump also framed data centers as long-term national infrastructure, calling them “the oil of the next 20, 25 years.”
President Donald Trump speaks as he attends a ceremony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in Washington. He has called AI and data center threats “a hoax.” (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
But Krummrich said bad actors could easily derail any progress made, while public opposition grows. At least 75 U.S. data center projects worth roughly $130 billion were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to the nonprofit Data Center Watch.
“Data centers are going to be just as important as the power grid,” he said. “Yes, we try to secure all the critical infrastructure. But then the other piece is, how fast after an attack can you get everything back online?”
Krummrich said business continuity is key, and cyberattackers know the various vulnerabilities. His firm, Global Guardian, has security teams in more than 145 countries and in all 50 states, looking at cybersecurity and data center threats.
“When we think about a data center, you can’t just think about the large warehouses with all the servers,” Krummruch said. “You have to think about all the substations. You have to think about all the endless miles of fiber optic cable. They’re massive. All of that is vulnerable.”
Advice for Data Center, AI Executives
Through Global Guardian, which is headquartered in McLean, Va., Krummrich and his team offer strategic security plans to AI executives and data center developers as they navigate public opposition, threats and harassment.
“We’re having to protect a lot of our clients at town hall meetings because local people are getting the narrative that power and water prices are going to go through the roof, and that data centers are going to get subsidies. But that’s not true,” he said. “I tell my clients that a lot of this is misinformation. Still, they need to be prepared.”
His advice? “Engage, engage, engage to combat the bad actors filling the space with lies or disinformation,” Krummrich said. “For the data centers, they have to be consistent with their messaging. They have to give back to the community. They have to show the community that they care, and they have to really highlight the benefits of these centers, like all the jobs that are being created.”
Another safeguard, Krummrich said, is for companies to know their enemies, inside and out.
“If you’re a company, you need to know who is operating against you, and you need to have defenses set up, whether it’s in cybersecurity or on the ground in your own backyard,” he said. “Companies need to be looking for threats in chat rooms, at protests that are happening, and looking at what bad actors are doing elsewhere and being on alert.”
