NSA Electricity Crisis Gets Senate Scrutiny
February 9th, 2007Via: Baltimore Sun:
The National Security Agency’s impending electricity shortfall is “sort of a national catastrophe,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday.
Rockefeller, who took over as head of the panel when Democrats regained control of the Senate this month, called the power shortage a symptom of a larger problem: the NSA’s failure to manage long-range issues.
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“They haven’t focused on the large picture,” the West Virginia Democrat said in an interview.
The Sun reported last year that the NSA expects its power demands to exceed its supply within the next two years – an issue it has been aware of since the late 1990s. NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander has acknowledged the problem and assured lawmakers that he has assigned some of his top lieutenants to tackle it, according to a committee aide.
The NSA has set up an “issue management team” to work through the problem, The Sun reported last week. Such groups are usually assembled to focus on key spy targets, not infrastructure problems.
“It’s true that the power, space and cooling needs of the agency weren’t adequately addressed, and we’re fixing it,” said NSA spokesman Ken White. He said the agency had been working on the problem with lawmakers for nine months, updating them as recently as this week.
Related: NSA Risking Electrical Overload: “The Terrorists” and Sustainable Fascism
This is something I can get my fingers around, like a pencil-necked geek. Congress, with the prefix of not only CONning us, but of Being Conned by the NSA, will invest huge sums to help the NSA cool its supercomputers. When there are probably better ways to go about this. I was reading an article recently about how server farms are looking into DC power supplies being outside the buildings, and bringing in computer-friendly amps so that the inverters and rectifiers don’t have to be in the same rooms as the computers, in addition to liquid cooling systems. Huh, you’d think that the NSA would have contact with some of the people at Area 51 to show them how all that antigravity equipment is cooled and powered in the triangle craft…..May The Farce Be With You.
If nothing else, they could use the technology that ‘isn’t’ being sold to Iran from the old F-14’s that are lying around. Plenty of hoses, connectors, heat sinks, and power supplies to feed the needs of Ft. Meade.
Hey, NSA guys: I know you are reading this. I can help you switch over to 400 HZ power if you want. I might even be in your area soon….You know how to find me.