I went to visit “M3” last week, a 225-megawatt data centre spruiked as “a new digital gateway for Victoria”. It’s one of the biggest data centres in Australia and, as it happens, is just around the corner from me.
I wanted to hear its hum, to see its crenellations with my own eyes, its 41,000m2 of technical space, said to be “purpose-built for hyperscale growth and high-density compute”. I’ve read a lot about data centres, but I learned a few things by being there in person.
Observation 1: How the data centre looks on Google Maps bears no resemblance to how it looks in real life. The satellite view shows M3 surrounded by warehouses and other light industry infrastructure. In actuality, those structures have been razed. On the mud where they once stood, bobcats and bulldozers are roaring, and piles of gravel are mounting. The footprint of this data centre is quadrupling — at least.
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In the surrounding streets swarm people holding lollipop signs, most likely making the traffic controller award wage (from $27 an hour up to $60 an hour, depending). While a data centre may not employ too many people during operation, there is a huge employment surge during its construction phase — a pattern which calls to mind the mining boom.
Observation 2: You cannot get very close to the data centre itself. The fence is spiky and intimidating, and the gates are locked. A man sits on a plastic chair in the freezing wind, wearing a little orange vest — his job, from what I can see, is to make sure everyone who approaches the gate has accreditation. He also watches me as I peer at things. The gate he defends is tall and heavy, and opens only when staff swipe their passes. Cameras are everywhere.
This data centre, it turns out, has serious security. From NEXTDC, the owner of the centre, I learn the physical security systems installed in West Footscray meet ASIO requirements at Zone 3 level. That’s just two steps below the highest level, and means it’s classified as a “restricted area” with no public access, any visitors being on a “need-to-know” basis with a “close escort”. You can stroll into the foyer of Parliament House and the Department of Defence far more easily than you can access this building.
The barbed-wire fence surrounding Melbourne’s M3 data centre (Image: Jason Murphy)
The government has published new “expectations for data centres”, which says they “should protect sensitive and personal data, prepare for threats and disruptions, and limit physical and digital access to their data centres to those with a right to it”.
Data centres have also long fallen under the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018. We expect them to be secure. Traditional data centres, those focused on data storage and retrieval, are vital for the functioning of other types of critical infrastructure, such as banks and healthcare.
But this West Footscray AI facility takes security up a notch.
Why? The Australian government may be planning to use the facility. For what purposes? It could be truly mundane. AI would be useful for data-matching employment and tax information that must be kept safe under privacy laws.
Or classified information could be arriving. Perhaps executives in the Defence Signals Directorate are excited to look for patterns in gigantic datasets. One example could be hunting Chinese submarines using undersea microphones, another could be bulk processing intercepted communications, and a third might be using computer power to test the strength of various codes used by both our adversaries and us.
If any of those kinds of information are surging through silicon circuits in West Footscray, then the high fences are very much justified.
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Learning vs destroying
Physical security is a small but important part of the defence against spies who want to access the data. It’s an even bigger part of the defence against people who want to disrupt.
The ranks of malicious actors are not limited to those you could point to on a world map. All sorts of folk might consider it prudent or productive to blow up a data centre. For example, there is a vibrant anti-AI sentiment in the US technology sphere, epitomised by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
His book on the AI threat is entitled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” Rather than a kook, Yudkowsky is widely seen as brilliant by those in his field. He is revered by some of the biggest names in tech. And while those big names are not about to resort to Molotov cocktails, every intellectual movement has its radical fringes.
There are also simply West Footscray locals who wish their neighbourhood wasn’t being taken over and could stage a sit-in. Plus many people who think guzzling so many megawatts of power and gigalitres of water is rather unwise. On a rainy Melbourne day in June, the M3 data centre’s water use is modest — the atmosphere keeps it cool. But on a hot summer’s day? In a drought? If the dams were at 30%, and the city was under water restrictions? That kind of dystopia is the bread-and-butter of science fiction authors.
The security measures around the facility help explain another mystery: why data centres are in Australia at all. Isn’t land cheaper elsewhere? Turns out what data centres want isn’t to be low cost. They want a place that is safe, secure, quiet and stable. Australia’s political system is sound, our police are less corrupt than most, our geology doesn’t tremble, our populace is less prone to rioting, and our electricity runs consistently.
At least for now. If AI tips too many of us out of work, or hogs our power and water? That vaunted stability could erode.