Solving The Power Problem Is Going To Exacerbate The Water Problem
Part 1 touched upon the top-level issues emerging with modern day data centers optimized for Artificial Intelligence (AI) high-performance computing (HPC.)
The Army Janus Project based on deploying TRISO Fuel Pebble equipped microreactors has great potential to solve the power problem on a local basis. However, there is no current mitigation for the water challenges that face communities sponsoring these data centers that consume hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water a day.
I skipped over and through a lot of primary and tangential issues that arise from these powerhouse data centers that can’t be blithely ignored or dismissed by altruistic thoughts about taming the AI challenge as a nation-state.
The surveillance state is one of them–the biggest issue of all—and for good reason. A major concern is the historical serious malfeasance from federal agencies in the past and also the often hubris laden government thinking on this matter characterized by the NSA Utah Data Center HQs sign as emblematic of the problem.
The sign arrogantly reads “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear:” well la di dah.
The problem with such thinking is it is unAmerican: what happened to innocent until proven guilty and the privacy rights that we are guaranteed under the constitution interpreted into US law and the entirety of the 1974 Privacy Act?
This hubris on the government’s part is what led to the dastardly act described in Part 1 where the DOJ led FBI was reported by the DNI as undertaking 270K Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) efforts that were erroneously—improperly—and illegally–undertaken in 2020-2021 alone.
That is not the total number of FISA actions: this number includes only the ones found to have been done illegally. While odd that the DNI is reporting about a DOJ subordinate agency, these are intelligence authorities that are being violated.
The problem with the post 9-11 FISA construct described in the PATRIOT Act is it diminished safeguards by watering down, neutering or completely stripping away the fundamental principle of an adversarial element in the American justice system that has some type of arbiter in the process representing the suspect or accused.
The law institutionalized the government–the DOJ or FBI bringing the action—as the lone sanity check on the system.
Particularly for things like wire taps and phone monitoring, where the government burden of proof was simply that the action was “likely” to lead to criminal charges, the lowest bar imaginable. Picture a court system suddenly challenged by thousands of these requests per day (~365K/365 days.) If the rumored total numbers are correct, the erroneous or illegal actions represent some near 70% of the total FISA actions.
What could possibly go wrong here? Congress has been shockingly sanguine and nonplussed over many of these abuses that were particularly abhorrent–and illegal–when perpetrated by President Obama against President Elect Trump during his campaign, after his election and continuing right on through when he took office.
There was not much reaction from congress when it was disclosed that the Obama Administration effort included targeting Trump’s campaign, his emerging cabinet, many in his sphere of acquaintances and many supporters.
The effort became much worse when perpetrated by the Biden DOJ which took up where Obama left off.
Even after it was disclosed that the Biden Administration effort including targeting republican leaders, politicians, political groups and congress–both the senate and the house–in an egregious and over the top illegal manner in which they solicited a gag order that was granted by the courts to conduct such surveillance without notifying congress: there has seemingly been little to no outrage and righteous indignation nor charges.
A search on this topic with the latest information reveals the following:
The Biden administration’s FBI reportedly targeted over 400 Republican individuals and organizations as part of the “Arctic Frost” investigation, which included subpoenas issued to 34 individuals and 163 businesses, including financial institutions. Notably, the investigation involved spying on eight Republican senators and one congressman, as well as various Republican-linked groups like Turning Point USA.
The court system approved the Biden DOJ gag order not only because many were labeled as flight risks–including the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy–but also because of the express concern that they would destroy evidence.
The fact that there hasn’t been a total nuclear political war initiated by those legislators–and their supposed colleagues–who were targeted is frankly incomprehensible. But also says a lot about what is considered “fair game” in todays fractured political environment.
Reagan’s famous warning about “I’m from the government and we’re here to help” comes to mind when thinking through the government–the Intelligence Community (IC)—creating a monstrous and massive data center–the biggest in America—with the “trust me” caveat that you have nothing to fear if you are not doing anything illegal as the guiding principle.
The Army absolute tongue in cheek response for the Command Inspection Program or Inspector General inspections was “and we’re glad to see you.” With my response applicable, “let me help you out! How did you get in here?”
Many agencies were asked to comment on the original proposed verbiage and changes to the candidate GWOT PATRIOT ACT FISA language. In the near “pep rally,” patriotic fervor that dominated many of these actions in 2001 DC swamp, it was heresy to observe that the weakening of such safeguards could have a corrupting effect should government agents undertake political actions against perceived enemies such as occurred with the “plumbers” under the Nixon administration that led to the near impeachment and actual resignation of a president (notwithstanding that Nixon was likely set up by CIA operatives.).
I personally wrote those comments as input for our business unit at the time and took some heat for not getting on board with the “program,” with the above NSA Data Center quote often cited as the rationale behind the verbiage. I also questioned the wisdom of authorizing Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) funding coded as Defense Emergency Response Funds (DERF) or so-called “colorless” money in an environment where acquisition execution was challenged throughout DoD in particular.
Particularly in our relatively new agency that was held in very low regard because of a history of Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) program fails (such as the ill-fated but well-funded Automated Feature Extraction Program-which is today being revived again only with “AI” bumper stickers in the program title) which had continued after the establishment of NIMA.
The acquisition function within the new agency had such low regard that the 2000 congressionally sanctioned National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission (NIMA Commission) led by Peter Marino included an effort led by Tasc (Dr. Annette Kriegel, former Central Imagery and Tasking Office Director and Ms. Rita Lewis, renowned US Army Operations Research and Statistical Analysis (ORSA)) to produce a report called Getting Started that addressed the ongoing challenges with NIMA Acquisition efforts caused by the lack of a trained workforce and detailed a prescription to get on track going forward to achieve a professional, certified Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) that included a certification process.
The problem or challenge being that 9-11 occurred and all those DERF funds flowed in at a time–in NIMA— when the relatively nascent and immature acquisition processes were still—well—a work in progress. (DERF-so called color less money–can be used under such authority to fund current operations/O&M 1-year money projects, Acquisition or Research & Development (RDT&E) 2-year money, or recap of things like automation equipment or 3-year money: any category needed.)
These two big government muscle movements encompassing the neutering or watering down of citizen’s rights reflected in the PATRIOT Act combined with the influx of DERF–color less money—represented too much of a degradation of the best practice government oversight functions which we are still paying for today in terms of the expansive growth of government post 9-11. Which continued relatively unabated until DOGE sliced some 250K or so government positions.
You are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of your peers, but the post-9-11 laws passed by congress and signed by President Bush opted for the speed of actions while largely disregarding this fundamental basis of our justice system.
Concerning the data center capabilities, if there is one thing that boggeleth the mind about Ai it is the scale of things–the large numbers of–well–all of it. Much like dealing with distances and time and space where we discuss light years and the speed of sound routinely while truly not comprehending the vast distances.
For my simple brain it helps to think in terms that a million seconds is about 11.5 days, while a billion seconds is 31.7 years. A trillion is beyond our imagination, a thousand billion or 31,688 years. But we are talking about information in terms of quantity.
A Gigabyte–a billion bytes–has 9 zeroes, while a Yottabyte-the capacity of the NSA Utah Data Center-has 24 (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.) And my A Lotta is—well—you get the point.
Which answers the question on how–using cloud analytics, cloud computing and AI–the 35K strong FBI where not every swinging Ricardo is working FISA that they can manage to process so many FISA actions-and also get away with it by overwhelming the FISA court with volume.
In my somewhat tongue-in-cheek chart in Part 1 that highlighted large numbers somewhat peripheral to the NSA Utah data center capacity, it bears emphasizing that it is the first data center to achieve the capability of storing a Yottabyte worth of data. Which has to be put in perspective through examples because of the sheer, unimaginable size it represents.
Reminiscent of an old boss who was not the sharpest bayonet in the rack, who would often add—when at the end of guidance that was supposed to be informative, but always trailed off in Dufusville with—“and it’s out there” like some X-Files episode with Mulder and Scully.
If ever there was a good reason for congress to undertake an effort to fix FISA once and for all, the recent disclosures of the Obama and Biden administration abuses mandate refining the law to protect American citizens.
Which sadly enough includes those responsible for overseeing and safeguarding the process and protecting individual liberties: our congress. Who seem somewhat “meh” about the disclosures of Obama and Biden spying efforts.
Max Dribbler
18 June 2026
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