Underground data fortresses: The nuclear bunkers, mines and mountains being transformed to protect our ‘new gold’ from attack

It’s a sunny June day in south-east England. I’m driving along a quiet, rural road that stretches through the Kent countryside. The sun flashes through breaks in the hedgerow, offering glimpses of verdant crop fields and old farmhouses.

Thick hawthorn and brambles make it difficult to see the 10ft high razor-wire fence that encloses a large grassy mound. You’d never suspect that 100ft beneath the ground, a hi-tech cloud computing facility is whirring away, guarding the most valuable commodity of our age: digital data.

This subterranean data centre is located in a former nuclear bunker that was constructed in the early 1950s as a command-and-control centre for the Royal Air Force’s radar network. You can still see the decaying concrete plinths that the radar dish once sat upon. Personnel stationed in the bunker would have closely watched their screens for signs of nuclear missile-carrying aircraft.

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