Gigawatts & Governance: Data Security Crisis No One Is Talking About

Nancy Coblenz, who co-founds a company that builds AI data centers and modular power plants, opens by framing data center growth as a power problem. She contrasts the gigawatt-scale buildouts under way with grid capacity that falls well short of demand, and notes that waiting for a grid connection can take years. Audience polls on local acceptance of new facilities and on which weak points attendees have assessed set the tone for the rest of the session.

The middle section argues that ownership of the physical layer matters for security. Examples range from unexpected devices found during assessments, such as HVAC controllers, badge systems and payment terminals, to legacy control systems at power plants. She contends that where data sits, which laws apply to it, who can compel access to it, where hardware originates and who controls the power supply all determine how much trust a team can place in its environment. Vendor chains that extend several layers beyond the contracted party also get attention.

The close urges practitioners to ask direct questions about where data physically sits and under which jurisdiction, to engage facility owners and utilities, and to bring infrastructure risk into audits and vendor reviews. She links these concerns to geopolitical competition over supply chains and ends with a call for people who understand both threats and the infrastructure beneath them.