In a scene worthy of an American adventure film, a gang in Los Angeles targeted trucks transporting components related to artificial intelligence data centers , such as chips, in what city authorities described as the most audacious behavior in the past 25 years.
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Despite the presence of an unmarked civilian escort vehicle driven by law enforcement officers, the gang executed their plan by obstructing the escort vehicle and forcing it to stop, while the trailer sped away. It was later found in a truck yard in California near where the truck's journey began.
The same scenario was repeated about 3 weeks later, when the contents of a trailer carrying servers valued at about $10 million and escorted by security guards from another company were stolen. The shipment was headed to a data project in the US state of Texas.
Despite the shipment's movements being monitored via a special application, the thieves were able to hack the application and steal the trailer's contents as well, but they have not yet been found.
Investigators told NBC that these thefts represent the latest in a series of thefts of AI data center components before they reach their destination, with authorities tracking about 24 different thefts of trucks carrying expensive technology components in several states, including California, Texas, and Utah.
The thefts were not limited to expensive chips and components, but extended to include a large number of infrastructure components such as copper wires, enterprise servers, RAM units, storage disks and fiber optics.
In this regard, Keith Lewis, head of operations at Versick Cargonet, a risk assessment company whose team monitors truck theft incidents, explains that the components stolen from these trucks are so valuable that some thefts exceed $30 million in value per shipment, noting that stealing this equipment is much easier than robbing a bank.
The thefts were not limited to components destined for data centers in the United States, but also included trucks carrying components worth approximately $38 million that were planned to be flown to Asia.
Some shipments also included components for cooling data centers and even copper wires used to enhance the infrastructure of artificial intelligence data centers.
However, there is no clear and direct way to track the path of some components, and although it is possible to track the serial numbers of some chips and digital components, the rest of the physical components used in the infrastructure are difficult to track.
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