Hillsboro Data Centers Gain “Ring” Status With AI & CHINA Involved Now — What Is City Hall Not Telling Us?

Hillsboro isn’t just “a data center town” now.  It’s a trans-Pacific internet gateway of National and International importance. Here’s how subsea cables land on the Oregon Coast, how they route into Hillsboro, and what a fiber “ring” really is.

The Real Story – A Column

City Council Meeting – Tuesday 1-16-2026 – Link to Agenda and Meeting

HILLSBORO RESIDENTS: If you want to understand what’s happening right now — and what City Hall is lining up next — take five minutes and read this.  If nothing else, scroll down to catch the Key Points highlighted in red.

For decades, Hillsboro leaders have sold land expansion the same way every time: “high-paying jobs.” Big promises. Big maps. Big speeches. And the public is always told it’s progress — even when the details are thin, and the clock is already running.

In 2023, we watched a major push to add land again — this time under the banner of CHIPS Act expansion — and it nearly slid through before the ground shifted and Intel laid off roughly 6,000 workers locally. But did that reality slow the growth machine? Not even close. The talking points just changed. The agenda kept moving. The deals kept cooking. And residents were still expected to clap from the hallway.

Now expansion talk is back — only this time, it’s not really about jobs. Not the kind most families recognize. Tech-sector jobs are leaving, but land demand is accelerating — because the new “must-have” industry isn’t factories full of people. Its facilities are full of servers.

So hear me out.

Here’s what’s actually happening under the hood in Hillsboro:

Hillsboro (Oregon) in 2026 is functioning as a trans-Pacific digital gateway — a Network Access Point (NAP) , as the industry calls them — where next-generation subsea cables feeding Asia-Pacific connectivity are aggregated, switched, and distributed into U.S. data center ecosystems. Flexential+1

And why will you be hearing urgency to expand our Urban Growth Boundary in the next few months? Because the infrastructure is already here — and once a metro area like Hillsboro becomes a cable + ring + interconnection hub, the land rush is basically baked in and billions are flowing. And the

So what the hell is a “fiber ring”?

A ring is a loop of high-capacity fiber that connects major data centers and carrier hotels, allowing traffic to flow in both directions.

If one segment is cut (construction, crash, sabotage, whatever), traffic can reroute around the loop. That’s why rings are prized: redundancy + low-latency + lots of paths.

Here’s a simple diagram that might help –

The plain-English version

• Subsea cables hit the Oregon Coast (landing sites + cable landing stations).  This started years ago, and it has continued.

• Terrestrial fiber backhaul moves that traffic inland from the Oregon Coast to Hillsboro.

• Hillsboro data centers host the critical electronics that “light” the cable and push traffic to networks, cloud, and AI compute.

Hillsboro, as a data center hub, now has as many as eight transpacific cables, is approaching 30 data centers developing multiple fiber rings, has cheap land, power, and water, and offers the best tax giveaways in the Nation.

Flexential openly markets one Hillsboro facility as “the NAP of the Northwest” and says it’s a U.S. landing hub for multiple APAC (Asia Pacific: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, etc.)  subsea systems. Flexential+1

What cables are we talking about?

Multiple sources point to Hillsboro as a termination/aggregation point for at least these systems:

1) New Cross Pacific (NCP)
Flexential says NCP’s U.S. cable landing function is housed at its Portland–Hillsboro campus and markets it as high-capacity connectivity into Asia, including mainland China. Flexential
Industry reporting also ties the NCP Oregon landing infrastructure to Pacific City-area facilities. Submarine Networks

2) Hawaiki
Flexential describes Hawaiki as terminating at its Hillsboro campus with a large capacity linking the continental U.S. to Hawaii and the South Pacific (Australia/New Zealand and beyond). Flexential
Additional reporting places Hawaiki’s Oregon landing-side equipment at a Pacific City cable landing station. Submarine Networks+1

3) Bifrost
Bifrost is described as connecting Southeast Asia (including Singapore and Indonesia/Philippines) toward North America, with an Oregon landing tied back to Flexential’s Hillsboro campus. Flexential+1
Submarine-industry reporting describes the Winema, Oregon, landing station as ready for service and connected to Hillsboro for interconnection gear. Submarine Networks

4) Jupiter (separate from the battery company)
Submarine industry reporting describes Facebook/Meta’s Jupiter system landing in Tillamook County and colocating landing-station functions with the Pacific City NCP facility (with Microsoft’s infrastructure referenced in that chain). Submarine Networks

5) “Ring-connected” systems are often listed in Hillsboro ring marketing
A Wave/Astound “Hillsboro Data Center Ring” description has historically listed cross-connect availability for systems including FASTER and TGN, alongside NCP and Hawaiki (and a fifth system), as part of the ring ecosystem. Astound
(Translation: even when a cable doesn’t “terminate inside one building,” Hillsboro is marketed as a place where fiber pairs and capacity are easy to move around.)

Is Hillsboro now home to the world’s fastest data connection to China?  And what about Amazon?

One thing is clear from the companies’ own marketing: Hillsboro’s “Ring/NAP” ecosystem is tied to transpacific systems that explicitly include China as a destination — and they present that as a selling point, not a rumor. Flexential’s “NAP of the Northwest” writeup (11/11/2025) says its Portland–Hillsboro 2 campus houses the U.S. cable landing station for the New Cross Pacific (NCP) system and describes NCP as providing “the largest and fastest connectivity to mainland China,” alongside connections to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Wave Business (also posted by Astound) promoted Hillsboro’s Ring I + Ring II buildout by listing transpacific destinations served through those systems as including China (along with Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Guam, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and American Samoa).

KEY POINT #1:  Important nuance: “connected to China” doesn’t mean China controls Hillsboro — it means Hillsboro is being marketed as a place where networks can access high-capacity routes that include China as one of the endpoints.

And yes — Amazon/AWS is in this picture too, especially through Bifrost. Submarine-industry reporting says the Bifrost Winema cable landing station is connected to Flexential’s Hillsboro campus (where terminal and interconnection gear is hosted), and describes the Winema CLS as built/owned by Astound and controlled by Amazon/AWS interests, with the Bifrost fiber pairs feeding into Astound’s terrestrial fiber network into Hillsboro. Submarine Networks+1 Astound also publicly described completing a 108-mile underground fiber route from the coastal landing area south of Pacific City to Hillsboro, enabled in part by AWS’s Bifrost investment. Astound+1

KEY POINT #2:  The point isn’t to yell “conspiracy.” The point is simpler and more damning: global-scale infrastructure decisions are being made, marketed, and financed — our City Hall is deeply involved in these decisions, preparations, and infrastructure moves -and the people of Hillsboro are still treated like we don’t deserve to be told, nor to understand the map – and who is doing business in our town!  

Why Flexential Hillsboro 2 matters (the “NAP” building)

Because it’s being marketed as the place where:

• Subsea systems’ terminal equipment is hosted, and

• interconnection/carrier ecosystems can “touch” that capacity fast. Flexential+1

KEYPOINT #3: Hillsboro has acheived status in this Data Center, Ring, Cable world that exists in few places!

This isn’t just marketing. When a region becomes a cable-termination and interconnection hub, it tends to attract more large compute tenants and data center investment — because latency (the tiny delay it takes data to travel across the network) drops when you’re closer to the major routes and cross-connect points, and because bandwidth becomes cheaper and more resilient where fiber and carriers cluster.  

National security angle — without the tinfoil

Here’s what isn’t speculation: subsea cable landings into the U.S. are federally regulated, and national security review is part of the process. The FCC has been actively revisiting submarine cable licensing and security procedures, and Executive Branch review mechanisms (the “Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector”) show up in FCC public notices and filings. FCC Docs+2FCC Docs+2

And yes: Washington has heightened scrutiny of subsea infrastructure and foreign-linked risks in recent years. Reuters+1

Could all this success put Hillsboro on a list of places our enemies will monitor or target?

If Hillsboro is evolving into a central trans-Pacific interconnection hub, then it’s not just an economic development story—it’s critical infrastructure. In a geopolitical crisis, critical infrastructure becomes part of national security planning, whether local residents are briefed or not.

QUESTIONS WE MUST ASK OURSELVES:

The Herald’s question list for our leaders:

KEY POINT #4: If Hillsboro is now acting as a strategic communications node for the world, why are residents treated as if we’re not even allowed to understand the map or invited to the discussion?

Crucial Questions To Ask:

Homeboy conclusion – After 50 articles on Data Centers, BESS Batteries, and land use issues around these matters, and hundreds of hours observing every field and converted farm, I believe I know exactly what is happening.

Hillsboro is being marketed as a trans-Pacific gateway — a place where Asia-facing bandwidth becomes U.S. computing Mite. That’s not a small thing. It’s the kind of thing that quietly rearranges land, water, power… and politics.

And the part that keeps happening?   The people who live here are always the last ones invited to the conversation.

This evening, we will look directly at what the City of Hillsboro leadership is about to do to us on this entire front.