The copper cables that power and connect the world’s internet traffic have made Loudoun County, Virginia, a target for a specialized kind of theft. As construction crews build the physical backbone of the digital economy in this corner of northern Virginia, they are now required to watch for thieves stealing the very wiring that will carry data across the globe.
The county, known internationally as “Data Center Alley,” houses more than 200 data centers, including vast facilities for Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft. According to the county’s Department of Economic Development, Loudoun accounts for 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic. That digital gold, however, has a physical vulnerability: copper cable has become a prime target.
A Surging Crime Wave in Data Center Alley
Since 2022, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office has recorded a 40 percent increase in copper theft incidents at data center construction sites. One theft at a Google data center site in Ashburn in 2023 resulted in $300,000 in losses from stolen copper cables and damaged electrical panels. The crime is organized; sheriff’s investigators report that suspects often arrive in stolen vehicles, equipped with cutting tools, and strip construction sites of their wiring before making a quick getaway.
The economic impact is severe and widespread. The Northern Virginia Technology Council estimates that data center construction delays caused by theft cost the local economy $50 million in lost revenue in 2023.
The delays affect not just the construction timelines but the operation of facilities that handle a large share of the world’s internet traffic. With the data center industry in Loudoun projected to grow by 10 percent annually through 2030, more construction sites, more copper in the ground, and more targets for thieves are expected.
A County Forged by History Confronts Modern Threats
Loudoun County’s transformation from an agricultural breadbasket into a global digital infrastructure hub is relatively recent, but its history runs deep. The county was carved from Fairfax County in 1757 and named for John Campbell, the Fourth Earl of Loudoun, who served as governor general of Virginia. Settlement had begun decades earlier, in the 1720s and 1730s, as English and Welsh Quakers, Scots-Irish, and Germans moved south from Pennsylvania and Maryland.
English settlers and enslaved Africans arrived from Tidewater. By the time of the American Revolution, Loudoun had become Virginia’s most populous county.
Its abundant grain fed George Washington’s Continental Army, earning it the nickname “Breadbasket of the Revolution.” The county’s strategic location near the capital shaped later conflicts. During the War of 1812, federal documents and government archives were evacuated from Washington and stored in Leesburg. President James Monroe treated Oak Hill Plantation in Loudoun as his primary residence from 1823 until his death. The Civil War split the county sharply.
Both of Loudoun’s delegates to the Virginia Secession Convention favored the Union, and John Janney, a former Quaker and slave owner, presided over the convention that ultimately voted to secede. Fighting came in October 1861 with the Battle of Ball’s Bluff near Leesburg, where future Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was critically wounded.
Union troops occupied Leesburg in 1862, and Confederate forces later recaptured it.
