r/Anarchopunks

Thieves Are Now Targeting AI Data Center Construction Sites for Copper and Expensive Equipment
Luis Prada (7/3/2026)

Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.

Americans don’t seem like they’d be particularly broken up if the data center craze gripping corporate America were stopped dead in its tracks. According to recent polling, data center hate is one of the few things capable of uniting people across the political spectrum. At this point, the only people who’d genuinely miss them—besides the tech CEOs insisting we need them for reasons they can’t explain—might be the thieves making a fortune stealing the mountains of copper and equipment headed to their construction sites.

According to Business Insider, investigators recently recovered two stolen trailers near Chicago containing roughly $1.3 million worth of data center supplies, including $300,000 in copper wire stolen in Alabama, and another trailer carrying $1 million in infrastructure equipment taken from Florida. It’s a booming industry, with the US Department of Homeland Security estimating that cargo theft costs businesses about $35 billion a year, and the AI boom is now fueling a whole new niche within that black market.

Wherever data centers are being built, the thieves follow. We do live in a land of opportunity, after all, and what is a data center if not a giant opportunity to steal a lot of copper wiring to offset all the water the data center is going to be stealing from us?

The same race to build ever-larger data centers that has sparked public backlash over energy use, water consumption, and the menace they pose to nearby communities has also made an entirely new criminal economy. Every data center needs truckloads of valuable materials before the servers can be crammed in. Every new shipment is just another opportunity thieves can seize.

While the AI revolution threatens to kill countless jobs, leaving potentially millions of Americans in the lurch, maybe all those future jobless Americans can turn to the booming data center theft industry. Maybe AI is a job creator?

I believe that America is experiencing what Germany was going through in the 30's.

I believe ICE is a modern, American interpretation of the gestapo.

I believe that bloodshed will be necessary to save the soul of our country.

I believe things will get worse before they get better.

I believe Alex Pretti and Renee Goode are the most famous, but not the most important, of the many people who have already made sacrifices, willingly and unwillingly.

I hope the strongest of our leaders are able to Make Our Country Great (FUCK maga, our country's greatness is not in their hands.)

I know our government is monitoring the Internet for posts such as this. ICE, municipal police, sheriffs, and other forms of so-called "law enforcement" are arresting, detaining, beating, torturing, raping, and in all other ways dehumanizing American citizens and noncitizens.

I say this with the full knowledge of the consequences:

Fuck the dictator donald trump and fuck ice. I'd rather die fighting against hate, than live accepting it.

EDIT: TO ALL YOU MAGA FUCKS WHO THINK YOU'RE "OWNING" ME: I'M LAUGHING AT THE BRUISES ON YOUR CHINS SHAPED EXACTLY LIKE TRUMP'S TINY LITTLE NUTS.

These are the zines that just got an ICE protester decades in prison. You can order them here

I'm posting this here even though I'm not a punk rocker or an avowed anarchist because I saw that on this sub three and four months ago there were a number of posts on this sub regarding the #PrairielandDefendants. But this week I don't see any.

Well this week they were sentenced and the sentencing was OUTRAGEOUS. Particularly for Daniel Sanchez Estrada who was not even at the ICE detention Center. He got THIRTY-YEARS for moving a box of zines. The implications of this for all types of communities is absolutely stunning. I myself am warning Black people, DJs in particular, that if they go to DJ at an anti-police brutality rally, for example, and they leave because things are getting heated - the crate of hip hop and rap albums that they took with them could be "evidence" of a domestic terrorist conspiracy according to the way NSPM-7 is being evoked in court. The lyrics of the albums are often anti-capitalist, anti-american and anti traditional gender roles.

What's true for hip hop and rap DJs is just as true for you guys. The very fact that you make an effort to print and distribute anti-establishment zines or trade anti-establishment punk music downloads could end up catching you a case related to arrests for an incident in which you did not even take part.

I'm going to be discussing this with former prosecutor and now defense lawyer Eric Anderson. If you're interested go over to my profile where I have more information about when that discussion will take place. It has links to articles related to the Prairieland case. I don't know how this sub feels about outbound links. That is why I am directing you to my profile. I also have a punk song about Daniel Estrada that is posted on my profile. Feel free to critique it if you would like.