Tech giants compete to build private data centers

Holding leadership positions responsible for safeguarding artificial intelligence places immense pressure on the employees tasked with monitoring hundreds of data centers around the world. These facilities serve as the vital artery for online banking transactions, messaging, and AI services, making self-control an indispensable requirement.

In Singapore, specifically at a command center operated by the American company Digital Realty, which manages data centers globally, analysts sit surrounded by digital maps and screens monitoring facilities that resemble warehouses filled with servers emitting a constant hum.

The staff’s duties extend beyond merely responding to failures as they occur; they must also detect early warning signs, such as sudden spikes in temperature, to prevent any service disruptions.

Daniel Nain, 37, and his colleagues receive thousands of alerts every week.

Speaking to the Associated Press, he said, “If I show signs of fear, my team members will also be overcome by panic. So even when I feel tense, I make sure to hide it.”

This command center, along with two others in Europe and the United States, monitors more than 300 data centers spread across the world’s six continents on a 24/7 basis.

As the need to build more data centers grows, so does the political controversy surrounding them in many parts of the world, amid an intensifying race to develop AI tools that require massive computing capabilities.

Serene Nah, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer and head of the Asia-Pacific region, stated that without these centers, “everything would stop working” in a world that has become heavily dependent on advanced technology.

According to Nah, data centers have become critical infrastructure and a matter “perhaps no less important than national security,” adding, “We must always ensure that these centers never go down.”

Nah noted that “there is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding our work,” amid public opposition from those who view data centers as causing “large amounts of carbon and heat emissions and consuming significant amounts of water.”

Around the world, tech giants such as Microsoft and Alibaba are racing to build their own data centers to train and run AI models, in a global competition estimated to cost trillions of dollars.

Digital Realty’s global command center is headquartered in Singapore, located within one of the three data centers the company operates there.