The government wants to invest no less than €965 million in ‘military datacenters’. This is the largest investment in datacenters in Belgium. Construction is scheduled for 2029.
The aim is to establish several secure locations throughout the country. The datacenters will play an important supporting role in military operations by processing data from drones, satellites, and combat units in real time, according to the financial newspaper De Tijd.
The datacenters could also store data from other government agencies. This is part of a broader investment package of 1.6 billion euros in technology to make our country more digitally resilient. In the coming years, additional resources will also be allocated to a large encrypted network (the so-called Defense Classified Network), IT security and digital transformation.
In the next legislative period, the Ministry of Defence also wants to duplicate its commandcenters to make them less vulnerable to attacks. In the period up to 2034, another half a billion euros will be allocated to various cyber security projects. This is in line with the intention to develop a fully-fledged cyberforce within the Belgian army.
The world counts 11.800 datacenters. The US dominates with 5.381 datacenters, almost half the world’s total… more than the next 200 countries combined. Belgium got 79 datacenters.
Artificial Intelligence is the driving force:
• Microsoft — $80 B AI datacenter investment.
• Amazon AWS — $11 B in Georgia, $20 B+ AI campuses in Pennsylvania.
• Google — $9 B AI/cloud expansion in Oklahoma.
• Meta — $29 B Louisiana AI mega-site (“size of Manhattan”).
