Attacks on Russian Data Centers: It's Not About Bots
Peter Zeihan
5 min
If you pull the plug on that, send them back 40 years or more, you get some catastrophic outcomes. That's what's going on in Russia right now with the Ukraine war.
Chapters
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0:00
The Real Impact of Data Center Attacks
There has not been a meaningful decline in hate bots by the Russians despite active midterms. Seven of the largest data centers that Russia has have been hit and probably will not reopen anytime soon. When you start burning through data center capacity, a lot of these things that we just associated as background information in our everyday lives start to fail.
-
2:18
Russia's Technological Regression
The Russians jumped over a couple of stages of development from the 1960s to modern systems. If their data center sector goes away for whatever reason, they don't slip back to where they were in the 2000s. You're talking about them going back to, from an American point of view, relatively early industrial communications technologies. If you pull the plug on that, send them back 40 years or more, you get some catastrophic outcomes. The Russians don't have a lot of skilled labor left to maintain these systems. That's what's going on in Russia right now with the Ukraine war.
Key points
- 0:00
There has not been a meaningful decline in hate bots by the Russians.
- 0:29
Seven of the largest data centers that Russia has have been hit and probably will not reopen anytime soon.
- 0:29
When you start burning through data center capacity, a lot of these things that we just associated as background information in our everyday lives start to fail.
- 0:29
Unlike the United States, which literally has like 20,000 data centers, the Russians only have 200.
- 2:49
The intervening technology that the Americans, that the West was using in the 1970s and 80s and 90s and 2000s and 2010s, that doesn't exist.
- 2:49
If their data center sector goes away for whatever reason, they don't slip back to where they were in the 2000s.
- 2:49
You're talking about them going back to, from an American point of view, relatively early industrial communications technologies.
- 4:14
If you pull the plug on that, send them back 40 years or more, you get some catastrophic outcomes.
- 4:14
The Russians don't have a lot of skilled labor left.
- 4:14
They don't even really know how bad the situation is.
On the map
Who and where
Places · 3
- Russia 15
- Ukraine 2
- United States 9
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