One Wilshire Los Angeles CA Internet Exchange

// Risk Intelligence

// Strategic Context

One Wilshire stands as the digital nexus where the Pacific Ocean meets the American internet, a 30-story monument to the geographic destiny that made Los Angeles the gateway between Asia and North America. Built in 1966 as a conventional office tower in downtown LA's financial district, this building evolved into the most concentrated telecommunications facility on the West Coast through pure geographic advantage. Los Angeles sits at the optimal landing point for trans-Pacific submarine cables, where the great circle routes from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, and other Pacific capitals reach the American mainland with minimal cable length and maximum efficiency. The city's position as the largest Pacific Rim port, combined with its massive population and economic base, created the perfect conditions for telecommunications infrastructure to naturally concentrate at this single point. If One Wilshire went offline completely, the United States would lose its primary digital connection to Asia, forcing internet traffic to reroute through Atlantic cables via European hubs or through secondary West Coast facilities with far less capacity. The economic impact would cascade through every sector of the American economy that depends on real-time communication with Asia, from financial markets executing trades in Tokyo to logistics companies tracking container ships crossing the Pacific.

// What This Facility Does

One Wilshire operates as the West Coast's primary internet exchange point, functioning as a massive digital switching yard where dozens of internet service providers, content delivery networks, and telecommunications carriers interconnect their networks. The building houses hundreds of miles of fiber optic cables that snake through its floors, connecting directly to major trans-Pacific submarine cables that terminate at nearby landing points in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and El Segundo. These underwater cables carry terabits of data per second across the Pacific, linking American internet users to servers and services throughout Asia and Australia. Major technology companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services maintain significant infrastructure within One Wilshire to ensure their services can reach Asian markets with minimal latency. The building also serves as a critical peering point where smaller regional internet service providers connect to major backbone networks, making it essential not just for international connectivity but for domestic internet traffic throughout the western United States. Content delivery networks use One Wilshire to cache popular content closer to West Coast users, reducing the load on cross-country internet infrastructure. The facility operates with redundant power systems, climate control, and security measures designed to maintain 99.999 percent uptime, supporting equipment that never stops processing the digital communications that have become essential to modern economic life.

// Why This Location Is Strategically Important

One Wilshire's location in downtown Los Angeles places it at the epicenter of the nation's second-largest metropolitan area, within fifteen miles of the submarine cable landing points that connect America to Asia. The building sits just blocks from the Los Angeles financial district and within thirty miles of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle forty percent of America's containerized imports. This proximity means that the same digital infrastructure carrying internet traffic also supports the logistics networks that track and coordinate the movement of physical goods through America's busiest port complex. The facility connects directly to major fiber optic routes running north to San Francisco and Seattle, east to Phoenix and Denver, and south to San Diego, making it a critical node in the national internet backbone. Its position relative to the San Andreas Fault system creates both vulnerability and strategic importance - while earthquake risk threatens the facility, the same geographic factors that create seismic activity also determined the optimal cable landing points along the California coast. The building's role extends beyond simple geography to network economics, as the concentration of carriers and service providers creates powerful network effects that make One Wilshire increasingly valuable as more companies locate their infrastructure there.

// Real-World Risk Scenarios

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake along the nearby Newport-Inglewood Fault could cause catastrophic structural damage to One Wilshire while simultaneously disrupting the submarine cable landing points that connect to the building, creating a double failure that would sever most trans-Pacific internet connectivity for weeks or months. The building's age and pre-modern seismic design standards make it particularly vulnerable to ground motion that newer telecommunications facilities were built to withstand. A coordinated cyberattack targeting the building management systems could disable climate control and power distribution, forcing telecommunications equipment to shut down automatically to prevent damage, while simultaneously attacking the network infrastructure of multiple carriers to maximize disruption time. Physical security vulnerabilities include the building's location on Wilshire Boulevard, where a vehicle-borne explosive device could potentially damage critical infrastructure floors, and the relatively open access to the building's street level compared to more modern telecommunications facilities built with security as a primary concern. Power grid failures represent another critical vulnerability, as One Wilshire depends on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's aging electrical infrastructure, and a prolonged blackout could overwhelm backup generator systems that typically provide only hours or days of autonomous operation.

// Impact Radius

A complete failure of One Wilshire would immediately affect internet connectivity for the ten million residents of the Los Angeles metropolitan area while simultaneously degrading service quality for hundreds of millions of users across the western United States who depend on the facility for access to Asian websites and services. Financial markets would experience severe disruptions as trading firms lose high-speed connections to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other Asian exchanges, potentially forcing the closure of Pacific Rim trading sessions. The entertainment industry, concentrated in Los Angeles, would face major challenges distributing content to Asian markets, while technology companies would struggle to maintain their cloud services and social media platforms for Asian users. Port operations at Los Angeles and Long Beach would face significant complications as logistics systems lose connectivity to shipping companies and manufacturers throughout Asia, potentially creating physical bottlenecks in America's supply chain. Recovery time would depend heavily on the nature of the failure, with cyber attacks potentially resolved within days but earthquake damage requiring months or years to fully restore capacity. The cascading effects would ripple through every sector of the American economy that has become integrated with Asian supply chains and markets over the past three decades of globalization.

// Historical Context

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan severed multiple submarine cables connecting Japan to the global internet, forcing traffic to reroute through facilities like One Wilshire and demonstrating how quickly single points of failure can become critical bottlenecks. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 flooded telecommunications facilities in lower Manhattan, including major internet exchange points, causing widespread outages and highlighting the vulnerability of urban telecommunications infrastructure to natural disasters. In 2008, multiple submarine cable cuts in the Mediterranean Sea disrupted internet connectivity across the Middle East and South Asia for weeks, showing how damage to undersea infrastructure can have impacts lasting far longer than typical network outages. The 2003 Northeast blackout affected telecommunications facilities across multiple states, demonstrating how power grid failures can cascade through internet infrastructure even when individual facilities have backup power systems. More recently, the 2021 fire at an OVH data center in France destroyed servers and disrupted services for thousands of companies, illustrating how quickly physical damage to modern telecommunications facilities can translate into widespread service disruptions.

// Risk Assessment

One Wilshire faces higher risks than most critical telecommunications facilities due to its age, location, and concentration of infrastructure. Unlike newer purpose-built data centers constructed with modern seismic standards and distributed across multiple locations, One Wilshire represents a single point of failure for vast amounts of critical infrastructure. The building's location in downtown Los Angeles exposes it to both natural hazards and security risks that more remote or distributed facilities can avoid. However, the facility benefits from the expertise and resources of multiple major telecommunications companies that have strong incentives to maintain and protect their investments. The concentration of technical talent and redundant systems within the building provides some resilience advantages, as multiple organizations can respond to problems and multiple backup systems can activate during failures. Compared to similar internet exchange points in other major cities, One Wilshire faces above-average earthquake risk but below-average risks from other natural disasters like hurricanes or flooding. The facility's strategic importance has attracted increasing security attention from both private operators and government agencies, but its visibility and symbolic value also make it an attractive target for various threat actors.

// Bottom Line

Every American should care about One Wilshire because it represents the single most critical link in the digital infrastructure connecting the United States to the fastest-growing economic region in the world. When you video chat with relatives in Asia, stream content from Asian markets, or buy products tracked through Pacific Rim supply chains, your digital communications likely pass through this single building in downtown Los Angeles. The facility's vulnerability to earthquakes, cyber attacks, and other disruptions represents a national security risk that could affect everything from financial markets to social media to international trade, making it one of the most strategically important buildings in America that most Americans have never heard of.

// Evacuation & Shelter Guidance

// Counties Within Risk Zone

// Cities Within Risk Zone