The article claims that xAI’s supercomputer facility — known as Colossus, located in Tennessee — is being used by the U.S. military and other government agencies under a major contract awarded in July 2025. However, the facility reportedly relies on Chinese-made electrical transformers — more than 2,000 metric tons of them — raising serious security concerns about potential espionage, surveillance, or sabotage.
Security analysts warn that using imported transformers could introduce “back-door” vulnerabilities: components that can be exploited to compromise the data center’s security or performance. Given that Colossus handles highly sensitive national security tasks and frontier-AI model creation, such risks may have far-reaching consequences.
Moreover, the article notes that the data center has already faced at least one physical security breach involving a foreign-national subcontractor who reportedly photographed the facility’s interior without authorization. This incident is described as part of a broader pattern of potential threats targeting supercomputing infrastructure.
In short, while Colossus represents a major leap in AI compute power — enabling large-scale model training and government-level AI applications — its dependence on foreign hardware and apparent lapses in security oversight highlight the growing complexity and risk at the intersection of advanced AI, national security, and global supply chains.
