As the surge and demand for AI chips and infrastructure continue to grow, that very same demand is also bringing about a demand in the criminal underworld. In the US, that has led to high-speed, high-stakes, and high-octane hijacks of cargo trucks carrying expensive AI datacentre supplies.
According to Business Insider, investigators in the city of Illinois recovered a pair of cargo trailers containing at least US$1.3 million (~RM5.3 million) worth of datacentre supplies. The haul included at least US$300,000 (~RM1.23 million) worth of copper wire spools that had been stolen in another state. Like so many other infrastructures, copper is a vital component in building and connecting datacentres.
The copper wire spools also had their tags removed, reportedly, in an attempt to deter anyone from locating the source of said spools. In this case, the US officials said that they discovered the trailer via its GPS tracker.
As mentioned, the surge in demand for these chips has created a very lucrative market. However, stealing the equipment used to create these datacentres may be counter-productive. Entities that procure these specialised machines tend to pay a king’s ransom for them. As such, they would usually have serial numbers, allowing the buyer to check the status of the equipment with the manufacturer. For that matter, receipts and warranties are usually requested by the same buyers, and those are things that thieves and fences would not be able to provide.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a heist story, although this is the first story that involves AI-based equipment. Back in 2020, MSI lost 40 cargo boxes worth of NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPUs, which cost US$336,500, more than RM1.37 million in today’s money.
In 2021, there was another heist in the US, this time involving thieves who broke into a moving cargo truck carrying several NVIDIA RTX 30 Series, on a highway between San Francisco and Southern California.
(Source: Business Insider, Tom’s Hardware, Freight Pulse)
