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58 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2025 A M E R I CA N M A D E A DVO CACY Smart Policies Can Ensure AI Data Centers Are Secure by Shane W hiteside, PCBA A Megatrends in the economy always capture the interest of the media, politicians, investors, and industry titans. The latest megatrend is artificial intelligence (AI), which has created a mad rush to increase American capabilities and has manifested itself in the proliferation of massive data centers. When you go beyond the headlines, there are very real supply chain and security challenges. Each data center can house tens of thousands of computer servers containing millions of semicon- ductors and printed circuit boards. Who is making the printed circuit boards for those servers? One thing is for sure: Much of the content originates in other countries. Even if the server has an American flag on the outside, there is a high probability that the printed circuit boards originated in China or other Asian countries. China is particularly problematic given the adversarial relationship with the U.S. Chinese firms like Huawei, Tencent, and Alibaba are major players in the data center and cloud com- puting space. Taking a global look at the countries of origin for Chinese technology in cloud data stor- age 1 , you can see that even if it says Mexico, Tur- key, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, or Indonesia on the outside, it's likely you will have Chinese technology inside. "China Inside" is a red flag for those focused on the security of our national defense and critical infrastructure systems like data centers. August saw a few high-profile factory investment announcements 2 signaling possible long-term con- fidence. But further examination of those reports reveals that U.S. manufacturing is a mixed bag. While it is true that pharmaceuticals and some other