Data Centers at Risk: The Fragile Core of American Power | RealClearDefense

On October 20, 2025, a glitch at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in northern Virginia triggered more than 6.5 million website outages, disrupting banking, logistics, and government operations.  - Macdonald Amoah , Morgan D. Bazilian , Jahara Matisek , Katrina Schweiker - FPRI

• What appeared to be a software fault was, in fact, a warning about the material fragility of American power. 

Behind every “cloud” lies a mountain of hardware: transformers, copper cabling, rare earth magnets, and fiber optics. 

These materials anchor the digital infrastructure of the United States. 

• When the supply chains for data centers and industry falter, compute slows, translating into degraded command-and-control capabilities for the US military.

In an era of strategic competition, digital reliability is deterrence. 

A single outage in a hyperscale facility can ripple across intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) networks, disrupting real-time operational efficiency... 

• However, these private-sector behemoths remain perilously exposed. 
• In the digital era, failure to treat data and data centers as national defense assets is a strategic blind spot...