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NSA does not have large-scale storage. If they did, it would be in a building somewhere, it would have electric power and they would have bought storage devices

NSA does not have large-scale storage. If they did, it would be in a building somewhere, it would have electric power and they would have bought storage devices for it from some company. The largest-known actual NSA datacenter is the size of a runty leftover from having built a real cloud datacenter, and there's only one of those while FAMG have hundreds of far larger datacenters.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago
Phew, glad the NSA doesn't have any large scale storage. Big relief. By the way, what do they use their $10 billion AWS contract for?
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I know it's not storing every email, phone call, photo, and video ever transmitted on the internet, like certain people want you to believe. A $10b AWS contract would not even amount to enough storage to keep one copy of the public web.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    I'm fairly sure the budget of archive.is is less than $10B. (Admittedly they don't store videos though.)
  - pavs 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_finished_structure_is_characterized%2Cdedicated_to_the_data_center.?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#%3A%7E%3Atext... Very confidently incorrect.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      If you think 100,000 square feet is a large data center, you obviously do not work in the industry.
      - subtra3t 3y ago
        Ad hominem much?
unethical_ban 3y ago
Given the history of NSA, warrantless surveillance and the overt existence of the Utah data center + collaboration with telcos and big tech, and the promise of AI analysis and quantum computing... I find it difficult to accept your underlying premise that NSA doesn't have access to a massive amount of data which AI may be able to analyze for them.
elorant 3y ago
A building somewhere. Like inside a military base for example. Good luck finding out what’s inside it and having anyone who worked on a restricted contract telling you about it.
taylorfinley 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Genuine question, is Exabyte-scale small in the context of cloud? Is Amazon stacking yottabytes? Edit: 'Exabyte scale' was from a Forbes article in 2013
- jeffbee 3y ago
  If you think this is a large datacenter, you are mistaken. You could fit this inside any cloud datacenter, and there are hundreds of those. The NSA thing draws 65MW. Google alone has over 7000MW of first-party energy generation resources, that doesn't begin to account for what they draw from the grid, and they're not even the biggest datacenter owner.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago

Phew, glad the NSA doesn't have any large scale storage. Big relief. By the way, what do they use their $10 billion AWS contract for?

jeffbee 3y ago
I know it's not storing every email, phone call, photo, and video ever transmitted on the internet, like certain people want you to believe. A $10b AWS contract would not even amount to enough storage to keep one copy of the public web.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  I'm fairly sure the budget of archive.is is less than $10B. (Admittedly they don't store videos though.)
- pavs 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe_finished_structure_is_characterized%2Cdedicated_to_the_data_center.?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#%3A%7E%3Atext... Very confidently incorrect.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    If you think 100,000 square feet is a large data center, you obviously do not work in the industry.
    - subtra3t 3y ago
      Ad hominem much?

unethical_ban 3y ago

Given the history of NSA, warrantless surveillance and the overt existence of the Utah data center + collaboration with telcos and big tech, and the promise of AI analysis and quantum computing... I find it difficult to accept your underlying premise that NSA doesn't have access to a massive amount of data which AI may be able to analyze for them.

elorant 3y ago

A building somewhere. Like inside a military base for example. Good luck finding out what’s inside it and having anyone who worked on a restricted contract telling you about it.

taylorfinley 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Genuine question, is Exabyte-scale small in the context of cloud? Is Amazon stacking yottabytes? Edit: 'Exabyte scale' was from a Forbes article in 2013

jeffbee 3y ago
If you think this is a large datacenter, you are mistaken. You could fit this inside any cloud datacenter, and there are hundreds of those. The NSA thing draws 65MW. Google alone has over 7000MW of first-party energy generation resources, that doesn't begin to account for what they draw from the grid, and they're not even the biggest datacenter owner.