Source: The Next Web
As terrestrial real estate becomes scarce and local opposition to data center water consumption intensifies, Samsung Heavy Industries is pursuing floating infrastructure as a solution—a move that sidesteps planning permission battles and freshwater depletion but introduces new operational risks around corrosion, storm resilience, and submarine cable vulnerability. Hyperscalers are exhausting traditional sites and pushing into extreme environments (underwater, arctic, desert) not out of innovation preference but necessity. Samsung's bet suggests the next decade of AI compute expansion will increasingly depend on offshore engineering, which could shift undersea infrastructure geopolitics and give countries with maritime jurisdiction new leverage over global data flows.