Underfunded NSA Suffers Brownouts

An anonymous reader writes "Almost ten years after the an internal report, and a year after a Baltimore sun story warned that the electrical system at the fort Meade NSA HQ couldn't keep up with the growing electricity demand ... the problem has got worse. The 'NSA has had to resort to partial, rolling brownouts at its computer farms and scheduled power outages and some offices are experiencing significant power disruptions'. NSA director Alexander testified to congress about this problem. It is suggested he wanted to add more than $800 million to the 07 budget. A recent public powerpoint presentation suggested 70% of of all intelligence spending goes to contractors. It also included a graph, without numbers, of this spending. It suggests that US intelligence spending is around $60 billion. An internal survey that showed NSA employees have problems trusting each other."

Comments

They spent it already?

[Colin Smith]

Ah well, better get the printing presses running again.

Toilet seats

[gravos]

I think they may have bought one too many $40,000 toilet seats. But this is a serious issue: These brownouts are affecting their ability to spy on us! Something must be done immediately or innocent men may go free.

Re:Toilet seats

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

First, the sum trumpeted by Sen. Grassley in 1983 for the "toilet seat" was $640, not $40,000. And of course, $640 ought to be enough for any toilet seat!

Oh yeah, I forgot to say.

[Colin Smith]

This is why "the singularity" ain't going to happen.

A new kind of DoS attack

[TodMinuit]

Okay, everyone around the NSA, turn on all your lights, computers, TVs, air conditioners, and appliances. Operation Dark Storm is a go.

Obvious solution here

[cheros]

Install a generator that can use contractors as fuel. Solves two problems at once :-)

It has as beneficial side effect that it also reduces the amount of people leaning on healthcare, so everyone wins.

The only challenge I can see is that you have to take into account the amount of alcohol these people consume. Any oven should be able to use the spontanous combustions that may occur. Maybe turning them into biofuel may be better.

Sorry, heavy lunch :-)

NSA still using 12AX7 valves?

[flyingfsck]

Thermionic valves used for digital processing are run at low power. It makes them last longer and they don't need a winde analogue power range with digital data. That is essential otherwise the big digital thermionic valve computers would never have worked.

Maybe the NSA should try upgrading to transistorized computers now. A BC107 uses much less power than a 12AX7...

Re:All I can say is this..

[rm999]

The opposing argument is that September 11th happened because agencies like the NSA were underfunded at the time.

SimCity?

[ADRenalyn]

Did anyone else read this headline as a warning in the SimCity message window?