| Written By Seungmin (Helen) Lee for World Politics Review | In recent years, artificial intelligence has emerged as the most significant driver of global data center demand. Four tech giants—Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta and Microsoft—currently control 42 percent of U.S. data center capacity, and these companies spent $155 billion on AI infrastructure in the first half of 2025.

For the last decade, Next Peak co-founder Greg Rattray has been developing an idea around his passion for the intersection of geopolitics and cyber. Today, as geopolitical risks are increasing from emerging wars, domestic extremism, and erosion of global institutions, Next Peak officially launches a new branch: Intelligent Cyber Research (ICR)—finally bringing Greg’s idea into fruition. 

| By Seungmin (Helen) Lee | With the explosion in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers to support the exponential integration of AI into businesses, operations, governments, and daily lives, the cybersecurity of AI data centers is becoming increasingly important. Given that AI data centers host AI models, weights, and training data, these centers face an expanded set of threats—particularly related to hardware, model, and geopolitical security. This report recommends a new framework to develop more cyber-secure AI data centers.