Dietzenbach is a small German town of roughly 35,000 people, best known locally for its outdoor forest swimming pool and a distinctive observation tower that on clear days offers views toward Frankfurt, about 12 kilometers away. Its proximity to Frankfurt is a major reason why a US tech giant recently invested several billion dollars in a high-performance data center there: the greater Frankfurt area is one of Europe’s most important data-center regions.
Frankfurt hosts DE-CIX, the world’s largest internet exchange, which can handle more than 17 terabits of traffic at peak times—equivalent to nearly 3.5 million people streaming an HD film at the same moment. Some 76 data centers already operate in the greater Frankfurt region. Globally there are roughly 12,000 such complexes, and many more are under construction as demand surges.
A major driver of that demand is artificial intelligence. AI models and cloud services consume and produce vast volumes of data, requiring massive server capacity to process, store and deliver services smoothly. Data centers have therefore become the backbone of the modern internet and are critical to the functioning of modern societies: power grids, health systems, financial networks, transport logistics and many other essential services depend on them.
Because of this central role, Germany classifies data centers as critical infrastructure and gives them special protections. In March 2026 the federal government published a national Data Center Strategy that highlights their strategic importance, aims to double national data center capacity by 2030, and seeks to reduce reliance on non-European providers.
The concentration of traffic and services through these hubs also makes them attractive targets. Cyberattacks have risen sharply in recent years; the German Federal Bank reported in January 2026 that it sees more than 5,000 attacks per minute on its own IT systems. While data centers typically have strong cyber and physical defenses, that protection is not absolute. The 2021 fire in a major European data center in Strasbourg showed how physical damage can ripple widely: more than 3.6 million websites went offline and many customers lost data because backups were stored in the same building.
In conflicts, IT infrastructure has increasingly been targeted to disrupt military and civilian systems. During the war in Ukraine, for instance, attacks aimed at IT infrastructure sought to impede military operations and civilian logistics. In the Persian Gulf, drone and rocket strikes have hit data-center facilities owned by major cloud providers, causing major outages affecting banking and payment systems. Iranian authorities later published lists of potential IT-related targets in the region, prompting debate about whether critical data hubs should be defended more actively, including with air-defense measures.
Finding secure, suitable sites for new data centers is therefore a growing challenge. That challenge is compounded by local opposition in many places. Residents and environmental groups raise concerns about the huge amounts of energy and water required to run and cool server farms, and the fast turnover of hardware that creates substantial volumes of electronic waste. Researchers and operators are under pressure to improve efficiency, capture and reuse waste heat, and power facilities with renewable energy to reduce environmental impact.
Another common complaint is that data centers bring relatively few local jobs compared with the scale of investment and land use. A single complex can occupy tens of thousands of square meters while typically employing fewer than 100 people on site. Any regional economic benefit is often indirect—attracting other companies that rely on local IT infrastructure—rather than through large employment gains from the data-center operator itself.
These tensions have produced protests and policy pushback worldwide. In 2024 environmental activists in Chile successfully opposed an AI-focused data-center project, and in April 2026 the legislature in the US state of Maine approved a moratorium on data centers above 20 megawatts amid environmental and economic concerns; the governor later vetoed the measure. In Germany, construction is underway in Dietzenbach, yet plans for a large €2.5 billion data-center project in Groß-Gerau were rejected after local councilors concluded the development would be too large and its environmental and social impacts too uncertain.
The global tech boom driving data-center expansion brings clear benefits—enabling AI, cloud services and the digital economy—but also raises difficult questions about energy, waste, local impact and security. Balancing technological growth with environmental sustainability, community acceptance and robust protection of critical infrastructure will be a defining policy and planning challenge in the years ahead.
This article was translated from German.