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diff --git a/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md b/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md deleted file mode 100644 index f8b326f2fb..0000000000 --- a/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,93 +0,0 @@ -I've been reading a few discussions on Reddit about the new NSA data -centre that is being built and stumbled upon [this -post](http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/comments/1jf6cx/the_guardian_releases_another_leaked_document_nsa/cbe5hnc), -putting its alleged storage capacity at *5 zettabytes*. - -That seems to be a bit much which I tried to explain to that guy, but I -was quickly blocked by the common conspiracy argument that government -technology is somehow far beyond the wildest dreams of us mere mortals - -thus I wrote a very long reply that will most likely never be seen by -anybody. Therefore I've decided to repost it here. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -I feel like I've entered /r/conspiracy. Please have some facts (and do -read them!) - -A one terabyte SSD (I assume that\'s what you meant by flash-drive) -would require 5000000000 of those. That is *five billion* of those flash -drives. Can you visualise how much five billion flash-drives are? - -A single SSD is roughly 2cm\*13cm\*13cm with an approximate weight of -80g. That would make 400 000 metric tons of SSDs, a weight equivalent to -*over one thousand Boeing 747 airplanes*. Even if we assume that they -solder the flash chips directly onto some kind of controller (which also -weighs something), the raw material for that would be completely insane. - -Another visualization: If you stacked 5 billion SSDs on top of each -other you would get an SSD tower that is a hundred thousand kilometres -high, that is equivalent to 2,5 x the equatorial circumference of -*Earth* or 62000 miles. - -The volume of those SSDs would be clocking in at 1690000000 cubic -metres, more than the Empire State building. Are you still with me? - -Lets speak cost. The Samsung SSD that I assume you are referring to will -clock in at \$600, lets assume that the NSA gets a discount when buying -*five billion* of those and gets them at the cheap price of \$250. That -makes 1.25 trillion dollars. That would be a significant chunk of the -current US national debt. - -And all of this is just SSDs to stick into servers and storage units, -which need a whole bunch of other equipment as well to support them - -the cost would probably shoot up to something like 8 trillion dollars if -they were to build this. It would with very high certainty be more than -the annual production of SSDs (I can\'t find numbers on that -unfortunately) and take up *slightly* more space than they have in the -Utah data centre (assuming you\'re not going to tell me that it is in -fact attached to an underground base that goes down to the core of the -Earth). - -Lets look at the \"But the government has better technologies!\" idea. - -Putting aside the fact that the military *most likely* does not have a -secret base on Mars that deals with advanced science that the rest of us -can only dream of, and doing this under the assumption that they do have -this base, lets assume that they build a storage chip that stores 100TB. -This reduces the amount of needed chips to \"just\" 50 million, lets say -they get 10 of those into a server / some kind of specialized storage -unit and we only need 5 million of those specially engineered servers, -with custom connectors, software, chips, storage, most likely also power -sources and whatever - 10 million completely custom units built with -technology that is not available to the market. Google is estimated to -have about a million servers in total, I don\'t know exactly in how many -data centres those are placed but numbers I heard recently said that -it\'s about 40. When Apple assembles a new iPhone model they need -massive factories with thousands of workers and supplies from many -different countries, over several months, to assemble just a few million -units for their launch month. - -You are seriously proposing that the NSA is better than Google and Apple -and the rest of the tech industry, world-wide, combined at designing -*everything* in tech, manufacturing *everything* in tech, without *any* -information about that leaking and without *any* of the science behind -it being known? That\'s not just insane, that\'s outright impossible. - -And we haven\'t even touched upon how they would route the necessary -amounts of bandwidth (crazy insane) to save *the entire internet* into -that data center. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -I\'m not saying that the NSA is not building a data center to store -surveillance information, to have more capacity to spy on people and all -that - I\'m merely making the point that the extent in which conspiracy -sites say they do this vastly overestimates their actual abilities. They -don\'t have magic available to them! Instead of making up insane figures -like that you should focus on what we actually know about their -operations, because using those figures in a debate with somebody who is -responsible for this (and knows what they\'re talking about) will end -with you being destroyed - nobody will listen to the rest of what -you\'re saying when that happens. - -\"Stick to the facts\" is valid for our side as well. |