NSA electricity crisis gets Senate scrutiny

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.nsa26jan26001517,0,4141472.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

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.

"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.

<snip>

To curb its appetite for electricity in the short term, the NSA has shut off some equipment and delayed plugging in some new supercomputers.

[originalpckelly]

1. Why the hell does the NSA need supercomputers that powerful?

AAAAHHN!

They are spying on the whole world.

[damntexdem]

2. Ooh, with the power shortages, they'll have to ...

do more waterboarding and fewer electrical shocks to the testicles. ;-)

(Yes, I realize that the NSA is supposed to undertake electronic surveillance and that it's the CIA that specializes in torture -- I just couldn't resist.)

[peacetalksforall]

3. It takes a lot of power to data mine.

[jmowreader]

4. NSA has its own substation...

Normally, a substation is sufficient to handle a moderate-size town...NSA has one of its own. They currently need two and they probably should have three because that place is in love with big iron.

NSA's real problem is that you can't just build a substation. You've got to coordinate with the utility to hook you into the 22kV mains. You've got to file an environmental impact narrative statement. The utility has to have enough excess capacity, or put new excess capacity, onto the 22kV lines to handle this. Before anyone will sign off on this, they're going to ask one real simple question: why do you need a second substation? This they can't really answer.

Couple a level of security so paranoid they have classified the lunch menu for the last 45 years with a bunch of outside agencies that do not consider "you do not have the need to know" a good answer to every question they're asked, and you'll quickly understand why they don't have enough power.