about summary refs log tree commit diff
path: root/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md')
-rw-r--r--web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md93
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 93 deletions
diff --git a/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md b/web/blog/posts/nsa-zettabytes.md
deleted file mode 100644
index f8b326f2fb42..000000000000
--- 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.