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Does the NSA Need More Electricity?
An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."
there is surplus electricity available from Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
I wonder how much of that electricity is simply wasted on old and inefficient equipment. Government agencies really don't have much incentive to conserve electricity since they know their "bill" will always be paid, regardless of how large it gets....time to upgrade to blades of Turion X2 and/or Core2Duo servers for all that immoral surveillance....
No Such Agency needs that kind of power.
From the outside, we don't really know enough about their problems to suggest a solution. So, clearly the NSA should bring in an unbiased outside consultant, and brief him/her fully on every project that they need to accomodate. As an honest patriot, I am willing to volunteer.
"You've got an awfully big computer plant and a lot of precision equipment, and I don't think they would handle power surges and the like really well," -- WTF?
I've worked on several jobs for credit card companies, as an example, an office with 4,000 workstations. The power was connected to the electric company's grid in two different places from two different substations; in case one of the substations went out, the whole building could be handled from the one still going. All of the servers and almost all of the workstations were connected to a UPS with 15 minutes of batteries AND an emergency generator with 24-hours of fuel. About half of the non-computer loads, including elevators, emergency lights, sump pumps, 1/3 of the occupants air-conditioning, all of the A/C for the server rooms, etc. were connected to the emergency generators. Even the refrigerators and freezers in the cafeteria were on emergency power. And this was for a call center. But a facility upon which our national security supposedly depends can't handle power surges?
With modern networking technology you could put new computers anywhere. So, what's so special about Baltimore? Why not take that shiny new Cray and put it in Cheyenne Mountain, I hear they have room now.
Maybe they should have built their systems near a deep lake, and instead of paying ridiculous prices for AC, they could just pump water from the lake and circulate it. The water at the bottom of lakes is always around 4C, and the cost of pumping it through a radiator type system is relatively very-cheap, reliable, and consistent. It's quite a popular method of cooling near the great-lakes region, I do believe.
"the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion"
It costs $8 billion dollars to get the NSA to budge? Give me half that and I'll poke them with a stick until they move.
There wouldn't be a power problem if we'd been allowed to build new plants over the last 20 years.
I live in BGE's service area. Never had a problem, but they've been stressing for years they wanted to build a new power plant and the environmentalists won't let 'em.
You call it spying; I call it transparency.
If the only thing men wanted was to live their short lives peacefully and raise a family, then nobody would care if he was being watched. It is the need to hide something that calls for privacy.
An organization like the NSA is not waste - it is, IMHO, the future. The next thing is to make all their collected information publically accessible. Imagine a world where you could surf the net from work, and see what your wife was doing at home and what your children were learning at school - knowing all that time that your children and your wife can see what you are doing at work.
Of course the only reason this world would appear unattractive to someone is if he had something to hide. Imagine no lying and no cheating. You do something and you stand by it. Proudly.
Let me fill you suckers in on a little secret. The NSA is run by the Government. The Government doesn't know the meaning of the words efficient or effective. The only government operations which SEEM efficient are the ones they refuse to tell you anything about.
Realize that much of what is classified is classified to cover someone's ass, and not due to national security concerns. Imagine if your company could classify information it didn't want people to know about, what would they classify? All the bad news, that's what. Notice that any and all bad news coming out of the government is directly from employees to the press, and never EVER from officials or press relations offices.
Now you know that the NSA can't even figure out how to get electricity set up so that they can power their billion dollar computers, meanwhile your company, which you consider to be run by dopes probably, has multiple plans to deal with such issues. The reason for this is simple:
The NSA does not design computers, they just buy them on contract from big companies like IBM or whoever. All they have to do is write a check.
This leaves the NSA with the responsibility to plug that computer in, and they have failed at it. And you can take it as a fact that this is the case with almost all government projects. They write a check to a contractor, and then don't have the competence to use what they bought.
Ok. I know this is probably not the best way to start a reply but - you are f#&%ing crazy. Ok. No cheating or lying (how this is achieved in your sick little had will remain a mystery to me) but what do you say about, eh, picking your nose? Going to the bathroom? Masturbating? Crying? Doing something you want to remain private, while harming no one? People like you scare me more than the NSA, CIA, FBI or the local police altogether. You're not the quite by-stander. You are the one rushing to get the brown uniforms.
They also "jack up" their prices for the Government because of the ridiculous amount of red tape required to do anything for the Federal government. If you're working for a small company, you just go to the owner and ask for approval for new hardware. For the Government, you have to do through several levels and maybe wait a year or five. Also, there are ridiculous and invasive regulations that Federal contractors have to follow, like the Drug-Free Workplace Act that requires them to set up piss-testing programs for their employees, and (less true today) have affirmative action programs to ensure hiring of minorities and women (thus possibly causing more competent workers to get passed up in the name of equality).
If I were doing work for a dementedly demanding entity like that, I, too, would charge 300% of my usual rate as compensation for the headache I'd wake up with every morning.
-b.
"We" want a corruption free, fair government.
No, seriously. As someone who has worked in government procurement before, you would be absolutely amazed to see all of the nonsense the USG must go through - according to law - to purchase anything beyond small office supplies (and heaven help you if you need to purchase those in bulk).
A few examples:
- It took one month to have a lock changed. Not a lock at a secure facility or anything of the sort, mind you, and preparing the paperwork to create the order form and see that it had all the necessary approvals cost more than changing the stupid lock. But don't worry - that lock was changed without any corruption at all.
- Time to wait for a request for most small items (purchases below $2,500) is at least a month, usually 6 weeks. If it is above $2,500 (and, no, you cannot purchase items individually if it's above that amount - they all have to be on the same PO), at least three bids must be made from different companies and if it is a piece of technical equipment, committees must be formed so that everyone can sit around and argue about what their requirements are for a few months rather than making the process quick. If you're buying a lot of new computers, expect a lag of several months - or a year.
- Let's not even get into the various acts that, on top of that, prevent the government from buying from certain entities, encourage it to purchase from others (minorities, women owned businesses, etc.), and the other groups the government creates to "streamline" ordering that do nothing more than add an additional step to the process.
(Above was with the State dept. - your mileage may vary)
The simple fact is that the government cannot act like an efficient, effective corporation and simply purchase stuff because it has been buried in red tape. Why is it buried? "We" buried it. By "we", I mean American citizens, but especially their elected officials.
Americans taxpayers, reasonably, don't want to pay taxes into a government that is corrupt and practices cronyism. This makes sense and, in spite of all the cynical things you hear on Slashdot, it must be noted that the U.S. government has very low corruption levels when compared to others, and we generally do hold those who break the law accountable for it. However, this (very) relatively corruption-free government comes at a high price - efficiency. An honest employee who needs to get his or her hands on equipment quickly simply can't do it - it must be passed through miles and miles of red tape first. Legislators always love to jump on these little matters when they com up, pound their desks, and demand something be done to stop it, which leads to yet more red tape.
It's a sad, sad day when a purchase must pass through the hands of at least 5 very busy people (and often pass through their hands more than once) to get approval. But that's what I saw.
I left asking myself - is it worth allowing a little corruption to avoid wasting billions a year in administrative fees? I'm not sure I could give that question a qualified "yes", but sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
After seeing how the government does things with purchasing as an intern, I can almost understand the no-bid contracts with Haliburton. Just the bidding process on these contracts would've taken YEARS, and not met the policymakers' desired timeline (which you can see as right or wrong).
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
funny how "anonymous coward" supports not hiding.
Funny how the real parent, noit hiding behind anonymous exposes some facts and gets rated flaim bait.
And this proves what? That the original parent is correct!
Just like the US did to the USSR in the late 80s, perhaps the nations of the world could bankrupt the USA by flooding the world communication channels with heavily encrypted traffic. The NSA would keep demanding more and more computers and power, draining the nation of its resources.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
In that it corrects some of my mistakes, and I appreciate your comments.
I neglected to mention that my particular experience was in an embassy. Most of the administrative personnel are not American citizens, which means the USG is a bit leary about handing out cards to them. There were only a handful of American personnel running the Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and these Americans were very busy in other areas and weren't the type of personnel you ask to make small purchases.
Regarding GSA - we made big orders through them, but only once every quarter/six months or so (don't recall specifics). Shipping big pallets like that from the U.S. can get expensive, and between time it takes to make the purchase order, assemble the pallet, ship it to post, clear customs, etc. it can take months.
My experience will obviously vary from that of many federal employees.
I've never found anyone with clearance to be shy about it. I know three people with an active clearance, one with secret, two with top secret. Those really are the only two levels of clearence. TS is divided in to some controlling keywords, but it's the same basic idea. In either case you are given access only to what you need to know. It's not like the guys with TS clearence know all the government secrets, they know only want relivant to their area.
None of them have ever been shy about the fact they are cleared. It's not like they shout it out as though it's a badge of pride, but if you ask they'll tell you. Generally, you can guess from their jobs they have clearance. They work on things that are, well, secret. They can tell you their general area of work, but not the specifics.
That some group would go around kidnapping all the people with clearance is rather unlikely. There are a whole lot of them and the government would take rather violent exception to that.
And the reason they don't just build a small power plant is...?
Powerplants aren't cheap, and a well-designed UPS solution is a bit more complicated than just a spare power cord.
Using ballpark numbers, $21M/yr and $0.07/kWh gives about 40MW(e) load for our "UPS". Since you always buy one with room for growth, and since this is even more of a PITA to swap out than your average lead brick, call it 100MW(e) design. But how do we make it uninterruptable? Remember, all powerplants have maintenance downtime, even without accidents. You ideally want three plants, any one of which can handle the full design load; this allows for one to be down for routine maintenance, one down for unexpected accident (say, a safety fault emergency shutdown), and one to keep the load going. You also want this as a "ready-swap" load, and a power plant does require a few minutes warm-up time (exact amount varying by type); so, you'll want to run them all regularly, and transfer surplus power to the grid, to offset (say) the Pentagon electric bill.
So, what kind of plant? Since we're doing three, I'd suggest using different types, so as not to put all the eggs in one basket, and further reduce the chance of a single-point of failure. I'll presume the Bolognium reactor from Area 51 is unavailable for this purpose. Wind and solar are too unreliable for this. Hydroelectric doesn't have a convenient enough water source. Geothermal is laughable in this location... although it might be a factor to consider for the Fort Meade Mk II location. Fossil plants (oil, coal, NatGas) have some environmental considerations, but not unmanageable; if necessary, designing the plant to liquify the entire stack output shouldn't more than double the cost. Nukes are compact, but REALLY don't like fast startups; a nuke also will make for an even bigger target for terror attacks... but of course, adding any power plant is going to paint an even bigger target on Fort Meade than there already is. Since it's really only adding another ring or two to the existing target, and since I'm not even halfway familiar enough to address such security considerations, I'll just ignore them. Some other Slashdotter can comment on that design aspect.
So, I'd pick a small nuke plant for the primary Meade power plant, with a liquid natural gas or oil-fired for one backup plant. IIR, it's not hard to convert between those two fossil fuel sources, which might be advisable if there are supply issues. The third plant might be either one; I'm not sure whether the higher simultaneous event/design failure risk of the nuke plants would be better than the additional fuel transport and security headaches for steady fossil fuel supplies. For argument, call it one nuke, one oil, and one gas, with the latter two designed with convertability in mind. I think the coal transport/storage would be the worst of the fossil fuels, so we won't use that at all.
So, we need three plants, each around 100MWe. My Googling suggests a pricetag of 100-200 M$ apiece for those; if you can find better numbers, feel free to note them. We need to arrange for steady suppies of fuel. We need to arrange for additional physical security. We need to find plant operators for all of them... every one of whom will probably need at least a Secret level clearance, to be confident a background check turns up anything nasty. We need to do some environmental work-up, since it's an urban area; "National Security" gets you only so far in Baltimore — although it might be enough to put a gag on the inevitable NIMBY idiots who'll turn out against anything.
So, we're probably talking half a billion dollars for the building of it, plus additional annual expenses including higher than average salaries for plant workers due to the need for a clearance. This isn't peanuts, even with the NSA budget. It's not a bad idea... but it's not the no-brainer it looks at first pass.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.