A fire at the $3.2 billion Lake Mariner AI data centre in Somerset, New York, has highlighted how tangled ownership structures in the AI data centre boom can obscure accountability when things go wrong. Firefighters responding to the June blaze found no working alarm, no suppression system and three dead hydrants, while safety documents they are legally entitled to access reportedly burned in the fire itself, leaving crews operating "kind of blind" in heavy, unidentified smoke.

The site involves numerous stakeholders: TeraWulf owns and operates the facility on land leased from a company controlled by its own chief executive, Fluidstack runs it, Google holds warrants for a future 14% equity stake and guarantees Fluidstack's lease payments, and Anthropic is among the AI firms whose compute demand it serves. TeraWulf says it has since installed Knox boxes and safety data sheet "go-bags", though the local fire chief reported in mid-August that hydrants remained dry and unrepaired. Separately, residents have questioned the project's economic benefits, noting the buildout will create only 35–40 jobs against 500 megawatts of power use, far short of the 165 jobs and $85 million investment originally promised in 2019 — a gap New York Governor Kathy Hochul has acknowledged amid a new moratorium on hyperscale data centre development.