"The accident was not an accident," said Gerado Pachucha, a former member of the LA County Sheriff's Department cargo criminal apprehension team, describing the deliberate targeting of the escorts. Keith Lewis, who heads cargo theft tracking operations at Verisk CargoNet, told NBC the hauls are like "stealing pure gold bars", with some single shipments worth more than $30 million. Beyond server racks, the targeted goods include copper wiring, fibre optic cables, RAM modules and storage drives, the building blocks data centres need delivered by road.

The violent methods are seen by the experts NBC spoke to as a possible escalation of tactics more common elsewhere. Scott Cornell, chair of the Transported Asset Protection Association, Americas, said the perpetrators are "extremely high-level organized rings" operating from a dozen different countries, adding: "They're planned. They're plotted. They're strategic."

Theft is not limited to highway robbery. The FBI warned in April about "cyber-enabled strategic cargo theft", in which criminals spoof freight brokers' email addresses to bid on loads, then divert the cargo to complicit drivers for resale. In response, states including Arizona, California, Tennessee and Illinois have set up specialised cargo theft task forces, and demand for private security escorts is rising among data centre logistics providers.