This so much. Good luck destroying a DC on earth without a very strong force. On the other hand, destroying a rocket on its launchpad just take one FPV drone.
Leaving aside the DCs already destroyed in the Iran totally not a War by an enemy that can be easily crushed at any moment ...
DCs in mainland US aren't well defended - a pattern of shrapnel heads landed by a mobile mortar or two with a 2 km radius would render most in need of some upkeep.
When you start describing rabble level opposition that high you run out of ceiling very quickly.
The US is filled with ex service personal who can whip together a mortar, as "military hardware" goes it's on par with what civilian firework techs have access to and can build in a garden shed, it's home grown resistance level guerilla tech.
If there's growing ground swell opposition to US data centres then the same Y'All-Qaeda militia plotting against dams and power substations will feel empowered to have a shot at a DC or too.
I don't think the US have the social fabric needed for an insurgency to develop on though.
Who said anything about civil war?
The US has many splinter loon groups who blow up buildings and like to attack infrastructure (see: US news). This has happened over the past decades with no civil war.
Data centres are soft targets - softer than banks. Do you remember when armed bank robberies were all the rage in the 1970s and 1980s? Not a time of civil war, just a time when a couple of people took control of buildings while heavily armed. Such a small group with fragmentation grenades can easily render a data centre unfit for use for several months with relative ease and fast ingress and egress.
Politically motivated armed attacks are a totally different thing.
Also, I think you massively underestimate the sheer size of an IA data center. If you want to destroy one with grenades you're going to need a literal truck load of grenades.
Really? Maybe read up some more, OC scale mafia groups weren't doing many of the bank raids of the US 1970s / 1980s - in any case these are still well below my bar on what constitutes a "very strong force".
> Also, I think you massively underestimate the sheer size of an IA data center.
You think wrong.
> If you want to destroy one with grenades you're going to need a literal truck load of grenades.
Exactly right, or rather several drums of farm grade fertiliser, diesel, ball bearings, a stolen truck, and somebody (or two) prepared to do a ram raid. Groomed idealogues or addicts with debt have all been used for such things.
Or, as already mentioned, drive parallel and mortar the centre from one end to the other, achievable by small discontent militia types (who abound in the US).
Serious question time: Are you honestly unaware of Timothy McVeigh? Would you describe him as "a very strong force"?