Request for Comments on Bolstering Data Center Growth, Resilience, and Security

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Telecommunications and Information Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240823-0225]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0660-XC062</RIN> <SUBJECT>Request for Comments on Bolstering Data Center Growth, Resilience, and Security</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice, request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) hereby requests comments on the challenges surrounding data center growth, resilience and security in the United States amidst a surge of computing power demand due to the development of critical and emerging technologies. This request focuses on identifying opportunities for the U.S. government to improve data centers' market development, supply chain resilience, and data security. NTIA will rely on these comments, along with other public engagements on this topic, to draft and issue a public report capturing economic and security policy considerations and policy recommendations for fostering safe, secure, and sustainable data center growth. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before November 4, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> All electronic public comments on this action, identified by <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> docket number NTIA-2024-0002, may be submitted through the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . The docket established for this request for comment can be found at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> NTIA-2024-0002. Click the “Comment Now!” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. Additional instructions can be found in the “Instructions” section below after <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. If you would like to submit business confidential information, please clearly identify any business confidential portion of a comment at the time of submission, file a statement justifying nondisclosure and referring to the specific legal authority claimed, and provide a non-confidential version of the submission. For comments submitted electronically containing business confidential information, the file name of the business confidential version should begin with the characters “BC.” Any page containing business confidential information must be clearly marked “BUSINESS CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of that page. The corresponding non-confidential version of those comments must be clearly marked “PUBLIC.” The file name of the non-confidential version should begin with the character “P.” Any submissions with file names that do not begin with either a “BC” or a “P” will be assumed to be public and will be made publicly available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Please direct questions regarding this Request for Comment to Travis Hall at <E T="03">thall@ntia.gov</E> with “Bolstering Data Center Resilience and Security Request for Comment” in the subject line, or if by mail, addressed to Travis Hall, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Room 4725, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-3522. Please direct media inquiries to NTIA's Office of Public Affairs, telephone: (202) 482-7002; email: <E T="03">press@ntia.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background and Authority</HD> Critical and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) have accelerated demands for more computing infrastructure. Powering these transformative technologies are data centers—facilities that house computing machines and related hardware components that process, store, and transmit large amounts of data—and the telecommunication infrastructure enabling information processing. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  42 U.S.C. 17112(b). </FTNT> Data centers are important enablers for economic growth and technological development. Their capabilities for data processing, ubiquitous connectivity, secure storage, cost-efficiency, and economy-wide job creation, among others, yield substantial benefits. There are approximately 5,000 data centers in the United States, and data center demand is projected to grow domestically by roughly nine percent year over year through 2030. <E T="51">2 3</E> <FTREF/> Driven primarily by hyperscalers, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> the total capacity of all data centers, including on-premise and colocation, is expected to rise steadily. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The expected growth in computing demand, and resulting demand for data centers, present challenges and opportunities for data center operators in balancing market growth, supply chain resilience, and data security. For example, energy supply, restrictive permitting, skilled workforce shortages, and land unavailability may present localized growth challenges in certain domestic markets. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> However, the increase in compute demand may also present opportunities to collaborate on public and private sector measures ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> infrastructure investments, workforce development programs) to catalyze data center growth, enable innovation, and foster economic development and global market leadership. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Cloudscene, “Data Centers in the United States” (March 2024) <E T="03">https://cloudscene.com/market/data-centers-in-united-states/all?trk=public_post_comment-text</E> . <SU>3</SU>  McKinsey, “Investing in the rising data center economy” (January 2023). Demand is measured by power consumption to reflect the number of servers a data center can house. Demand includes megawatts for storage, servers, and networks. <E T="03">https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/investing-in-the-rising-data-center-economy</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The term “hyperscale” data centers refer to data centers facilities comprising of 10,000 square foot/5,000-server facilities to colossal campuses with individual buildings over one million square feet, each containing hundreds of thousands of servers. <E T="03">See</E> In-Q-Tel, “Workshop on Cloud, Data Centers, and Great Power Competition,” (November 2023). <E T="03">https://assets.iqt.org/pdfs/Workshop-Report_Data-Centers_Nov-2023.pdf/web/viewer.html</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Synergy Research Group, “On Premise Data Center Capacity Being Increasingly Dwarfed by Hyperscalers and Colocation Companies,” (July 2023). <E T="03">https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/on-premise-data-center-capacity-being-increasingly-dwarfed-by-hyperscalers-and-colocation-companies</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Global Data Center Trends 2023. (2023, July 14). <E T="03">https://www.cbre.com/insights/reports/global-data-center-trends-2023</E> ; CBRE. <E T="03">https://www.cbre.com/insights/reports/global-data-center-trends-2023</E> . </FTNT> The continued growth of the U.S. data center industry hinges on resilient supply chains, access to power, trusted Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS) equipment, and a skilled workforce, among other factors. Powering and cooling data centers is energy-intensive: data centers physically located in the United States consumed more than four percent of the country's total electricity in 2022, with projections suggesting the share may increase up to nine  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> percent by 2030. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The increase in demand is incentivizing data center developers and utilities to maximize utilization of existing power grid infrastructure and water usage, with some data center operators pursuing alternatives to the grid, such as on-site energy generation and power grid infrastructure. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Outfitting new and existing data centers also requires a range of critical information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) components—semiconductors, chips, fiber optic cables, networking equipment, and more. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Lack of access to trusted equipment and skilled workforce shortages could limit both cyber and physical security functions necessary to protecting critical infrastructure operations. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  SemiAnalysis, “AI Datacenter Energy Dilemma—Race for AI Datacenter Space,” (March 2024). <E T="03">https://www.semianalysis.com/p/ai-datacenter-energy-dilemma-race</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  Aljbour, Jordan, Tom Wilson, and Poorvi Patel. “Powering Intelligence: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Energy Consumption.” White Paper. EPRI, May 2024. <E T="03">https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002028905/0/Product</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Mondal, S., Fashat, B. F., Rajbongshi, D., Mohammad Masum, K. E., & Islam, M. M. (2023). GEECO: Green data centers for energy optimization and carbon footprint reduction. Sustainability, 15(21), 15249. doi: <E T="03">https://doi.org/10.3390/su152115249</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security, “Assessment of the Critical Supply Chains Supporting the U.S. Information and Communications Technology Industry,” (February 2022). <E T="03">https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/ICT%20Supply%20Chain%20Re ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━