Built for what’s next: designing resilience into digital infrastructure
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As demand for AI and cloud computing accelerates, the digital economy is becoming increasingly dependent on an interconnected system of data centres, power grids, technology, supply chains and skilled people. Global data centre capacity is expected to nearly triple to 220GW by 2030, requiring about US$6.7trn in infrastructure investment. As this ecosystem expands, growing dependencies increase the potential for disruption in one part to spread across others. Building resilience into this growth will be critical to ensuring the long-term reliability of digital infrastructure. Built for what’s next, an Economist Enterprise research programme sponsored by FM, examines how these risks emerge, spread and are shared, drawing on a global survey of 1,800 leaders, scenario mapping, expert interviews and an advisory board.
Key findings
1. Rapid data centre expansion is challenging resilience and forcing trade-offs.
More than 90% of stakeholders have experienced a material digital infrastructure disruption in the past five years, making it unsurprising that around two-thirds report board oversight of resilience and three-quarters invest in targeted initiatives. Yet investment does not necessarily translate into preparedness for every type of disruption. When forced to make trade-offs, more than 80% prioritise growth, efficiency and AI deployment over long-term resilience, while preparedness for interconnected and compound risks appears less mature. This matters because decisions made during expansion—including where facilities are built and how much structural capacity they have—can be costly to reverse and may shape how risks spread and amplify across interconnected systems.
2. Pressure to meet short-term data centre growth targets can increase exposure to cascading “amplifier risks” when resilience is not built in early.
Decision makers recognise that amplifier risks—including supply-chain disruption and climate change—can have system-wide effects. More than two-thirds rank supply-chain disruption among the top five systemic risks, yet only about half are confident in their ability to manage it. The challenge is not only to manage individual risks, but also to understand how they interact and amplify one another across interconnected systems. Climate risk shows a similar gap between concern and confidence.
Measures that address amplifier risks—including geographic diversification, climate-informed site selection and compound-shock simulations—remain less common. Although these measures often require greater upfront investment and longer planning horizons, the research suggests that decisions made early in development can strengthen resilience. As digital infrastructure expands, companies across the data centre value chain have an opportunity to consider these risks from the outset, strengthening long-term resilience against shocks that can spread and amplify across interconnected systems. The consequences of such disruption may extend beyond operations to financial performance, investor confidence and long-term enterprise value.
3. Siloed planning could undermine resilience across the system.
System-wide resilience depends on effective co-ordination between owners, operators, utilities, suppliers, regulators and other partners. However, planning and preparedness efforts often remain focused on individual parts of the data centre value chain. Just 10% of those surveyed maintain structured crisis plans with all critical external partners. Almost two-thirds engage with only a select few, while a quarter stick to internal planning and reach out only when disaster strikes. This isolation could cripple readiness. A mere third possess cross-functional crisis teams, and only 30% run compound-shock simulations. Consequently, businesses across the data centre value chain may have limited visibility into how wider networks would respond to cascading disruptions.
4. Today’s emerging risks could become tomorrow’s constraints.
Cyber-attacks, grid constraints and extreme weather dominate the perceptions of systemic risk across stakeholders. More than 75% of each stakeholder group selected all three among the five risks most likely to have system-wide effects. By contrast, slower-moving emerging risks receive less attention. Fewer than 5% of survey respondents rank community opposition among their top five systemic risks and barely a tenth cite technological obsolescence.
These findings suggest that some emerging risks may receive too little attention despite their potential to influence future investment, expansion and resilience outcomes across the ecosystem. For instance, public opinion could increasingly shape siting and expansion decisions, while technological change could affect investment choices and long-term resilience. Resilience planning should therefore consider not only immediate threats but also slower-moving risks and how they may interact and amplify disruption across interconnected systems.
5. Human capital remains a critical resilience challenge across the data centre value chain.
Maintaining resilient digital infrastructure relies on a skilled workforce capable of operating and repairing increasingly complex data centres. Yet investment in human capital is not keeping pace with rapid sector expansion, with fewer than half of respondents maintaining dedicated talent pipelines or training programmes. About 60% of data centre operators already struggle to recruit qualified staff. As specialist skills become scarce, these workforce challenges may affect operational resilience, extend incident diagnosis and response times, and reduce the speed at which new capacity can be brought online.
As data centres face risks that can spread across organisations, supply chains, portfolios and even countries, resilience is no longer just about protecting individual facilities. It requires understanding how risks interact across the system and balancing growth with long-term constraints such as energy, land and technology.
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