Cargo thieves target AI data center supplies in $1.3 million heists — $300,000 worth of copper wire and $1 million worth of equipment recovered outside Chicago

An open trailer in a truck stop.

The boom in data center construction meant that millions of dollars’ worth of servers, cabling, and other parts and components are on the road at any given time. Because of this, cargo thieves and hijackers have started targeting these high-value items. Business Insider reports that a trailer containing about $300,000 worth of copper wire spool, which can be used for powering data center servers, was recovered last week by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in a truck yard near Chicago. The truck yard owner also said that the same driver dropped off another stolen trailer a week earlier, this time containing about a million dollars’ worth of data center equipment.

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