Across windowless facilities in the American heartland and beyond, a largely invisible workforce tends the machines that power the digital age — maintaining the servers, cooling systems, and networks that make cloud computing and artificial intelligence possible. These workers occupy a peculiar position in the modern economy: essential yet unseen, skilled yet rarely celebrated, their labor quietly underwriting the conveniences billions of people take for granted. As the demand for data center capacity accelerates alongside the rise of AI, the conditions and standards shaping this workforce may