Throughout the 25 years Gerardo Pachuca has spent investigating thieves who steal cargo from semitrucks, he says he’s by no means seen conduct this brazen. The marketing consultant and former Los Angeles sheriff’s detective claims that two instances in latest months, robbers stole expensive {hardware} destined for AI data centers utilizing a confrontational new tactic. It’s left the freight business on edge.
The incidents concerned two totally different shipments of high-value know-how touring from Silicon Valley to Southern California, in accordance to Pachuca, who says he discovered about the thefts from legislation enforcement authorities. Every truck was tailed by non-public safety professionals driving unmarked escort autos, which had been supposed to guarantee the items made it to their locations safely. However hours into one journey, one other driver rear-ended the escort in a hit-and-run, forcing it to cease. In the different case, the escort stopped after one other automobile nudged it right into a tailspin, a ploy generally generally known as a PIT maneuver, after which fled.
Everybody aware of the “accidents” believes the escorts had been intentionally immobilized, in accordance to Pachuca. As soon as the semitrucks misplaced their escorts, the drivers proceeded with out halting—however not to their deliberate locations. They had been by no means heard from once more, Pachua says, and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in information heart gear stays unaccounted for.
WIRED tried to independently verify Pachuca’s accounts with 5 state and native legislation enforcement businesses, however might not as a result of he shared restricted information to keep away from jeopardizing what he describes as ongoing investigations. However two different folks in the cargo business offered corroborating information.
J.J. Coughlin, chairman of the Southwest Transportation Safety Council, a nonprofit intelligence-sharing group, says one among the affected escort firms notified him as quickly as its automobile was attacked whereas it was guarding “high-value know-how.” Danny Ramon, director of intelligence and response at the freight-monitoring software program developer Overhaul, says he discovered about the rear-ending incident from legislation enforcement sources days after it occurred. He describes the state of affairs as a “coordinated assault” affecting a cargo of “AI {hardware}.”
Pachuca, Coughlin, and Ramon all say that nobody was harm in the assaults—they assume the truck drivers had been in on the scheme, an more and more frequent situation—and the perpetrators have but to be caught. They are all involved that the remoted instances might flip into an alarming development—a violent spin on freight crime, now enabled by cyber-based scams and hacks, and concentrating on the very tools powering the bleeding fringe of the web.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen,” Pachuca says of cargo theft nationwide. “The strategies they are utilizing, the worth they are getting, the frequency these crimes are occurring.”
Escort firms are a closing line of protection and are more and more in demand. Michael Duffy, CEO of Options Group Worldwide, says his escort enterprise used to be busy primarily forward of the vacation purchasing season, nevertheless it has now picked up year-round, with firms transferring liquid cooling components, servers, and laptop chips rising as his greatest purchasers. “Now that the values have shot by way of the roof, we’re getting referred to as all the time,” Duffy says. He estimates his firm has protected 13,000 shipments over the previous 4 years, with no single loss.
Excessive-value cargo and their escort autos have been focused in Mexico and different international locations for years. The suspected assaults in the US are now prompting escort operators to discover methods to beef up their safety, and a few are encouraging personnel to name 911 at the first signal of suspicion. “We’ve been attempting to give you a recreation plan,” says Rachel Fruchtenicht of Shadow Freight Safety.
AI Heists
Cargo theft has been on the rise since the begin of the Covid pandemic, when extra customers turned to ecommerce and supply for his or her each day wants. Extra lately, the booming AI information heart business has created a brand new goal for would-be thieves: Total spending on their development in simply the first half of this 12 months surpassed the complete for all of 2025. Whereas the general variety of thefts reported final quarter fell 26 % 12 months over 12 months, the worth of the items taken greater than doubled as criminals are more and more concentrating on costly cargo, in accordance to new data launched this month by Verisk CargoNet, an analytics and threat evaluation agency.
A few of the mostly stolen items embrace metals—particularly copper—and enterprise-grade laptop and networking tools, in accordance to Verisk CargoNet. These shipments are usually transported in accordance to customary procedures, creating “a major mismatch between their monetary worth and their peculiar transportation and safety profile,” Verisk CargoNet mentioned in an announcement accompanying the new information.
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