China's Undersea AI Data Centers Heat Up South China Sea, Risk Ecology

China has deployed its first commercial underwater data center, developed by Hailanxin, off the southeastern coast of Hainan Island, in shallow coastal waters of the South China Sea. The facility now provides data storage and computing services to internet companies working in artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, according to an article in Washington-based online publication The National Interest.

Hailanxin was once a designated supplier to the Chinese Navy, with core competencies in intelligent ship systems, marine information data, and seabed mapping. In 2022, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) blacklisted the company, alleging that its ocean surveillance systems, built using American technology, may have helped Russia monitor submarines, divers, and warships along Ukraine's coastline, according to the article written by Jeanette Tong.

It highlights that China is using the sea as both a resource and a geopolitical tool: offloading the environmental costs of AI expansion onto a shared global commons while racing to become the world's dominant exporter of cheap AI compute.

A standard underwater data center pod consumes between 500 kilowatts (kW) and 1 megawatt (MW) of power. Hailanxin's roadmap calls for 100 pods - implying a total output of 50 to 100 megawatts.

When 100 MW of waste heat is continuously discharged into the sea, approximately 100 million joules of energy enter the ocean every second.

Even with liquid-cooled rack technology and split cooling systems, that level of thermal discharge is sufficient to raise the temperature of tens of thousands of cubic meters of seawater noticeably within a single hour, the article states.

The article highlights China's poor environmental record in pursuit of economic growth. The country's dominance in rare earth production has come at an enormous ecological price: the sacrifice of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land and lakes along with severe health consequences for surrounding populations. Each ton of rare earth extracted generates roughly 2,000 tonnes of tailings and vast quantities of toxic wastewater.

While the current underwater data centers are located in China's coastal waters at some distance from neighboring countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, the ocean is not a closed system. Heat exchanged into these waters eventually integrates into global marine circulation. Hailanxin claims that the maximum temperature rise at the outlet is only 2°C and is manageable - but under the framework of global commons, unilaterally using the ocean as a "free heat sink" violates the international order.

Soon, China will begin exporting low-cost AI tokens to the world, powered by cheap energy and naturally cooled undersea infrastructure. These tokens will become China's next celebrated high-tech export-following solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs) - and buyers worldwide will rush to adopt them, just as few questioned the environmental devastation behind silicon wafer slicing or EV battery production, the article states.

- IANS