5 ms·

It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of

It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.

recursive 8mo ago
Speed of light establishes certain latency minima. Experimental data can falsify (or not) at geographical locations far enough from VA.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Correct but local governments using Palantir will need to provide it to them somehow.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-surveillance-software/a-73497117 https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-firm-palantir-extends-deal-with-french-intelligence-agency_6748523_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-halt-uk-palantir-contracts-grow-amid-lack-of-transparency-over-deals https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-ha... https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-state-mod-mandelson https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-s... https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-australia/ https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-aus... Mmmmkay…
- dboreham 8mo ago
  "Going through" doesn't necessarily imply store and forward. It could be tapped elsewhere and shipped to WVA. fwiw the idea of running a network in order to tap it is hardly new. The British operated largest telegraph network in the world in the 1800's for that reason.
  - Aurornis 8mo ago
    You think there's an entire shadow infrastructure across the United States or world that carries 80% of all internet traffic all the way to VA? It would have to be several times larger than the internet infrastructure itself due to the distances involved. All built and maintained in secret?
    - Henchman21 8mo ago
      No. That isn't required at all. Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
      - Aurornis 8mo ago
        > Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infrastructure required to get it all there. It was a targeted operation on backbone lines that were right there.
        PenguinCoder 8mo ago
        While the most well known, there are other points of presence doing the same thing. Easy and trivial to duplicate traffic at line speed. It doesn't affect the traffic flow itself.
        reactordev 8mo ago
        They will never believe you until you show them and that requires a clearance.
Den_VR 8mo ago
So they… drive the data around NOVA?
- shimman 8mo ago
  No, but if you want to collaborate with the federal government it makes it more convenient to be located where the federal government resides.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  No, but you can visit a “clean room” and look at the data at any number of sites.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount. Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to carry data all that distance. All built and maintained in secret.
- Henchman21 8mo ago
  Never tapped a port, eh? Edited to not be so flippant: I work in HFT/finance where recording all traffic is required I think by law and definitely for one's own sanity. We're able to maintain nanosecond trades while capturing ALL the traffic. It has zero impact on the traffic. This is normal, widely used tech. Think stuff like Ixia passive taps and/or Arista Metamako FPGA-based tap/mux devices.
  - wasabi991011 8mo ago
    But you are only tapping your own data that's already passing by you not? Not 80% of the internet that has nothing to do with you.
  - Aurornis 8mo ago
    > Never tapped a port, eh? I have. I have a background in high speed networking. Have you ever paused for a moment to consider how much infrastructure would be required to send 80% of data on the internet across the country and into a single datacenter in Virginia? If you've worked in HFT, you can probably at least start to imagine the scale we're talking about.
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      It’s not a single data center, it’s about 200 of them.
      - 8mo ago
rootusrootus 8mo ago
When I worked for a CLEC (during that moment in history when they were briefly a Thing), we had a USG closet at our main datacenter, and we are nowhere even close to NoVA. I expect they still handle it this way rather than try to funnel any significant amount of traffic to a particular geographical region.
ascorbic 8mo ago
Most of the replies to this seem to think it's referring to some kind of secret government datacenter. It's us-east-1, and every other cloud provider's US East and GOV zones, which are all in NVA

recursive 8mo ago

Speed of light establishes certain latency minima. Experimental data can falsify (or not) at geographical locations far enough from VA.

reactordev 8mo ago
Correct but local governments using Palantir will need to provide it to them somehow.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-surveillance-software/a-73497117 https://amp.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-firm-palantir-extends-deal-with-french-intelligence-agency_6748523_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/15/us-tech-... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-halt-uk-palantir-contracts-grow-amid-lack-of-transparency-over-deals https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/calls-to-ha... https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-state-mod-mandelson https://theweek.com/tech/palantir-influence-in-the-british-s... https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-australia/ https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2026/02/01/palantir-in-aus... Mmmmkay…
dboreham 8mo ago
"Going through" doesn't necessarily imply store and forward. It could be tapped elsewhere and shipped to WVA. fwiw the idea of running a network in order to tap it is hardly new. The British operated largest telegraph network in the world in the 1800's for that reason.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  You think there's an entire shadow infrastructure across the United States or world that carries 80% of all internet traffic all the way to VA? It would have to be several times larger than the internet infrastructure itself due to the distances involved. All built and maintained in secret?
  - Henchman21 8mo ago
    No. That isn't required at all. Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
    - Aurornis 8mo ago
      > Fundamentally you lack understanding of how this happens. Yes, there is some port duplication. Yes it costs money. But it is not anywhere near as onerous as you assume No, I understand networking hardware quite well actually. I'm also familiar with Room 641A. Room 641A did not capture 80% of internet traffic. If you think 80% of internet traffic could be routed through Room 641A you're not thinking about the infrastructure required to get it all there. It was a targeted operation on backbone lines that were right there.
      - PenguinCoder 8mo ago
        While the most well known, there are other points of presence doing the same thing. Easy and trivial to duplicate traffic at line speed. It doesn't affect the traffic flow itself.
        reactordev 8mo ago
        They will never believe you until you show them and that requires a clearance.

Den_VR 8mo ago

So they… drive the data around NOVA?

shimman 8mo ago
No, but if you want to collaborate with the federal government it makes it more convenient to be located where the federal government resides.
reactordev 8mo ago
No, but you can visit a “clean room” and look at the data at any number of sites.

Aurornis 8mo ago

> Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA Nobody who understands the scale of the internet could possibly believe this is true. Routing internet traffic through a geographical location would increase ping times by a noticeable amount. Even sending traffic from around the world to a datacenter in VA would require an amount of infrastructure multiple times larger than the internet itself to carry data all that distance. All built and maintained in secret.

Henchman21 8mo ago
Never tapped a port, eh? Edited to not be so flippant: I work in HFT/finance where recording all traffic is required I think by law and definitely for one's own sanity. We're able to maintain nanosecond trades while capturing ALL the traffic. It has zero impact on the traffic. This is normal, widely used tech. Think stuff like Ixia passive taps and/or Arista Metamako FPGA-based tap/mux devices.
- wasabi991011 8mo ago
  But you are only tapping your own data that's already passing by you not? Not 80% of the internet that has nothing to do with you.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  > Never tapped a port, eh? I have. I have a background in high speed networking. Have you ever paused for a moment to consider how much infrastructure would be required to send 80% of data on the internet across the country and into a single datacenter in Virginia? If you've worked in HFT, you can probably at least start to imagine the scale we're talking about.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    It’s not a single data center, it’s about 200 of them.
    - 8mo ago

rootusrootus 8mo ago

When I worked for a CLEC (during that moment in history when they were briefly a Thing), we had a USG closet at our main datacenter, and we are nowhere even close to NoVA. I expect they still handle it this way rather than try to funnel any significant amount of traffic to a particular geographical region.

ascorbic 8mo ago

Most of the replies to this seem to think it's referring to some kind of secret government datacenter. It's us-east-1, and every other cloud provider's US East and GOV zones, which are all in NVA