LOUDOUN COUNTY, Virginia, July 7 — The construction sites for America’s next generation of artificial intelligence data centres have become a magnet for thieves, with crews stripping copper wiring and hauling away server racks before the buildings are even finished. The trend, reported since early 2024, has hit sites in Virginia, Arizona and Oregon. In Loudoun County — the heart of the region known as “Data Center Alley” — police recorded a 300% increase in copper thefts at construction sites in 2024 compared to the previous year.
AI data centres require significantly more copper than traditional ones — up to 50,000 pounds per facility — due to higher power and cooling demands. That makes construction sites a target for metal thieves.
The haul
Stolen items include copper grounding wire, server racks, and cooling units. The thefts cause project delays of weeks and cost millions in replacement and security upgrades. Construction sites are often remote and lack security, making them prime targets.
Industry experts estimate that copper thefts cost the U.S. economy over $1 billion annually across all sectors. The scale of copper involved is significant.
A traditional data centre might use less copper. The jump reflects the intensity of power and cooling required to run the latest AI workloads — a difference that thieves have evidently noticed.
Urgency and scale
The U.S. Department of Energy has noted that AI data centres could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from 2% in 2022. That projection adds urgency to the secure construction of these facilities, even as the theft problem complicates the build-out. The same technical advances that drive the AI boom are creating new opportunities for the scrap metal trade.
Security upgrades at construction sites are now a growing line item in data centre budgets. The pattern is familiar from other infrastructure sectors — telecoms, rail, energy — where copper theft has been a persistent problem for years.
What to watch
The response from the industry and law enforcement will bear watching. The 300% increase in Loudoun County is a sharp signal that existing security measures are not keeping pace. Whether the answer lies in better site security, metal-marking programmes, or tighter scrap dealer regulation, the cost of inaction is already clear: weeks of delay and millions in losses.
Copper is essential to the electrical backbone of these facilities, and the thefts are a direct threat to the timeline of the AI build-out. The question is how quickly the industry can adapt its construction practices to a new era of theft.
