The container design is heavily inspired from Google's Datacenters. This will continue happening and cannot be prevented, even a new license for the Kernel prohibiting a military use won't help. Because they can fork an "old kernel" and continue their secret development on it. It's better to know what the government is doing rather than just trusting on a "license". We've been shown often enough in the past and present that people can't blindly trust a Government's actions and ethics.
Do the containers shield against strong EM fields? Otherwise an enemy could detonate a mini em-/atom-bomb close to the target, in order to destroy their operative computer systems. Is that the reason for the heavy metal casing? In that case they probably also used Fiber cables with the lastest known modulation techniques to get (n-)Terabit/s per container. Maybe they even have radiation shielding [1] to protect from inner and outer radiation. This beast doesn't look like it solely runs on diesel, but on an atom-reactor.
"Do the containers shield against strong EM fields?"
from article: Each EME has its own shock and vibration damping, power protection, water cooling systems, and electromagnetic shielding to prevent interference from the ship's radar and other big radio frequency emitters.
I would imagine that would include EMP given the modern threats and US Navy's general understatement of capabilities.
Err, any nuclear attack be it "mini" or regular is provocation to nuclear war. The US won't sit back and watch the Chinese blast our navy to bits with airburst nuclear weapons causing EMP. More than likely the US would strike back with nukes.
You don't get to avoid the whole balance of power/MAD card because your nukes were used for EMP only.
Well, for USA there are only two possible kinds of war opponents - guerilla warfare or countries that have also nukes; and you're not that likely to use ships like the one described for Afganistan. The only combat use for the ship is against nuke-capable opponents, and MAD is not an excuse to build military systems that won't function in any serious war with the intended enemies.
"Each EME has its own shock and vibration damping, power protection, water cooling systems, and electromagnetic shielding to prevent interference from the ship's radar and other big radio frequency emitters."
The military is no stranger to EM hardening their systems. They've been doing it since the cold war after all.
I doubt she has a nuclear plant, actually; there's a Raytheon paper [1] which spends some time talking about the need for fuel efficiency to maximize operational availability, which isn't often a concern for nuclear-powered ships whose rate of fuel "burn" is constant and whose refueling intervals are best measured in years.
Everything in the U.S. fleet except the large aircraft carriers and the submarines burns crappy low-grade diesel fuel. For the submarines, there are major advantages to not having oxygen-requiring engines, and for the aircraft carriers, they want to carry a lot of fuel for aircraft, not themselves. On the other hand nuclear reactors are too expensive to merit putting in ships which don't require them.
That is part of it. The other part is that for smaller ships, you end up having over half the ship manned by sailors who can handle the engine room and reactor. The Navy has enough trouble finding and keeping sailors for their nuclear power program, so they tend to restrict how they use them, otherwise they might end up in the unfortunate situation of needing to allow less qualified candidates through nuclear power school just to keep the fleet running.
Do the containers shield against strong EM fields? Otherwise an enemy could detonate a mini em-/atom-bomb close to the target, in order to destroy their operative computer systems. Is that the reason for the heavy metal casing? In that case they probably also used Fiber cables with the lastest known modulation techniques to get (n-)Terabit/s per container. Maybe they even have radiation shielding [1] to protect from inner and outer radiation. This beast doesn't look like it solely runs on diesel, but on an atom-reactor.