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At the time it was kind of an open secret in the industry. The floods were a convenient explanation, but a very large order from a client with a confidentiality

by K0balt 5y ago

At the time it was kind of an open secret in the industry. The floods were a convenient explanation, but a very large order from a client with a confidentiality clause ( very common in the industry) was widely known to be the main reason for short supply. It is possible that this client was someone else other than the NAS er... NSA but it is not very likely and at the time it was conventional wisdom among insiders that the "big spin" was the cause. There were even jokes about how all those drives spinning had to be oriented si that the precession wouldn’t slow down the earths rotation etc. Just because a customer orders a few gazillion of product x and wants to keep it quiet doesn’t make some kind of nutty conspiracy theory. It happens all the time. The Thailand floods drew down production even more, but without the giant order, there wouldn’t have been the same impact. Fun fact, any time two or more people want to keep something on the DL , it’s a conspiracy. Nearly everything that an intelligence agency does, is de facto, a conspiracy.

andai 5y ago
One of my favorite memes (in the sense of memetics) is the meme "conspiracy theorist". This phrase was weaponized by the CIA as a memetic self-defense mechanism. (Their own documents admit this!) But if you tell someone this, the meme itself is triggered in their mind, and their instinct is to not believe you, because you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
- gruez 5y ago
  >This phrase was weaponized by the CIA as a memetic self-defense mechanism. (Their own documents admit this!) That seems... totally expected? The problem comes when you're trying to use it as proof of something. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be true, but that doesn't mean every conspiracy is true.
donalhunt 5y ago
All big manufacturers bought whatever supplies they could get their hands on as soon as the impact of the floods was clear. Companies are uniquely positioned to minimise risk in their ability to execute. I remember this period well and aware that a number of large players basically bought up whatever supply was available to cover their needs in the short to medium term. The result was that retail pricing more or less doubled (if you could even get drives).
Sebb767 5y ago
> but a very large order from a client with a confidentiality clause ( very common in the industry) was widely known to be the main reason for short supply. So, just for the fun of it: Forbes estimates a capacity (at the time) of up to 12 EB [1]. Assuming they used 3TB drives, they'd need 4 million drives for this [2]. This article [3] shows the market for consumer drives at about 150 million in 2013 (figure 7). So the NSA order would've been in the ballpark of 2% of consumer drives sales - insanely large at the face of it, yes, but probably not enough to cause such a shortage. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprin... [2] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=12%20exabytes%20%2F%203%20TB https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=12%20exabytes%20%2F%20... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2020/05/29/hdd-market-history-and-projections/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2020/05/29/hdd-mark...
- px43 5y ago
  Does 12 EB seem super low to anyone else? I know of people who were delivering software to certain customers that were required/intended to work on EB scale datasets over a decade ago, and this was well before the Utah data center was a thing.
- wholinator2 5y ago
  I have a feeling that just comparing the numbers without looking at any of the logistics is just a convenient way to dismiss a theory you don't like. There's all kinds of things to think about like how 2% may be less than 100% but in an elastic supply of a globally distributed good, 2% of (total yearly) supply called upon all at once can be a _huge_ departure from the norm. Maybe the shortage isn't just a hard disk shortage but a shortage of shipping space to take those hard drives anywhere else but to the NSA. Maybe it's that the factory(s) don't make 100% of the drives in an instant and then just distribute them for the rest of the year, but slowly make a constant stream of drives, all of which were swallowed up for a period of time by the massive order, causing the shortage. There's a million other factors besides just "this number smaller that this number".
sva_ 5y ago
>At the time it was kind of an open secret in the industry. So is there any 'open secret in the industry' about the current chip shortage, that I'm unaware of?

by K0balt 5y ago

andai 5y ago

One of my favorite memes (in the sense of memetics) is the meme "conspiracy theorist". This phrase was weaponized by the CIA as a memetic self-defense mechanism. (Their own documents admit this!) But if you tell someone this, the meme itself is triggered in their mind, and their instinct is to not believe you, because you sound like a conspiracy theorist.

gruez 5y ago
>This phrase was weaponized by the CIA as a memetic self-defense mechanism. (Their own documents admit this!) That seems... totally expected? The problem comes when you're trying to use it as proof of something. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be true, but that doesn't mean every conspiracy is true.

donalhunt 5y ago

All big manufacturers bought whatever supplies they could get their hands on as soon as the impact of the floods was clear. Companies are uniquely positioned to minimise risk in their ability to execute. I remember this period well and aware that a number of large players basically bought up whatever supply was available to cover their needs in the short to medium term. The result was that retail pricing more or less doubled (if you could even get drives).

Sebb767 5y ago

> but a very large order from a client with a confidentiality clause ( very common in the industry) was widely known to be the main reason for short supply. So, just for the fun of it: Forbes estimates a capacity (at the time) of up to 12 EB [1]. Assuming they used 3TB drives, they'd need 4 million drives for this [2]. This article [3] shows the market for consumer drives at about 150 million in 2013 (figure 7). So the NSA order would've been in the ballpark of 2% of consumer drives sales - insanely large at the face of it, yes, but probably not enough to cause such a shortage. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprin... [2] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=12%20exabytes%20%2F%203%20TB https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=12%20exabytes%20%2F%20... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2020/05/29/hdd-market-history-and-projections/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2020/05/29/hdd-mark...

px43 5y ago
Does 12 EB seem super low to anyone else? I know of people who were delivering software to certain customers that were required/intended to work on EB scale datasets over a decade ago, and this was well before the Utah data center was a thing.
wholinator2 5y ago
I have a feeling that just comparing the numbers without looking at any of the logistics is just a convenient way to dismiss a theory you don't like. There's all kinds of things to think about like how 2% may be less than 100% but in an elastic supply of a globally distributed good, 2% of (total yearly) supply called upon all at once can be a _huge_ departure from the norm. Maybe the shortage isn't just a hard disk shortage but a shortage of shipping space to take those hard drives anywhere else but to the NSA. Maybe it's that the factory(s) don't make 100% of the drives in an instant and then just distribute them for the rest of the year, but slowly make a constant stream of drives, all of which were swallowed up for a period of time by the massive order, causing the shortage. There's a million other factors besides just "this number smaller that this number".

sva_ 5y ago

>At the time it was kind of an open secret in the industry. So is there any 'open secret in the industry' about the current chip shortage, that I'm unaware of?