"Why have we gotten to the point where we have permitted militaries of various states to use civilian commercial data centers for their military purposes?"
    • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      It’s not really about propaganda, but economic damage. If you destroy enough datacentres, you’ll destroy a country’s economy.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      In previous wars (and coups and other military interventions) the communication infrastructure has always been a target.

      Phone systems and broadcasters have always been aware that they’re among the first things an attacking enemy would target.

  • JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip
    1·
    19 days ago

    Very little negative impact on the average person, low staff numbers, frees up water and electricity for the people. Personally, I can’t think of a better target.

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
        0·
        18 days ago

        Where do you think Lemmy exists?

        Hosted in a bunch of random linux enthusiasts’ home labs.

        • kreskin@lemmy.world
          2·
          15 days ago

          I dont much care where lemmy exists. If it went away tomorrow I promise you that we’d be OK.

        • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          18 days ago

          What percentage do you think accounts for that? Sure, some instances, but the largest absolutely are indatacenters.

          But it’s a distraction. You ready to grow your own food? Immediately? Because losing datacenters means losing credit/debit cards. No cash because banks can’t connect to each other. No deliveries to stores. Society would literally fucking collapse.

          But all these fucking idiots can do is ignorantly chant “destory all datacenters” because they don’t fucking know what they’re talking about.

            • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              18 days ago

              Do… you not realize that Hetzner is one of the larger server providers in existence? They have multiple datacenters because of all the servers - in multiple countries.

              • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
                1·
                11 days ago

                Edit: I was being a toxic dick, I’m sorry I was wrong.

                wooossshh yep and thus you would be the one in this discussion to disappear. The rest of us will continue just fine on other communities.

                It’s never a good idea to choose the largest instance in the fediverse.

          • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
            11·
            15 days ago

            I’ve seen society “collapse” in the wake of a natural disaster and literally no one cared that their cards stopped working. People just started sharing everything and if you tried to give someone cash they’d look at you like you just handed them a dead leaf you picked up off the ground. Community doesn’t just survive, but it thrives in the absence of capital and the state. Others I know who lived through it still talk about how they miss the sense of comraderie everyone had during the aftermath. When the power comes back on, banks reopen, and everyone goes back to work the community atomizes again and everyone is back to focusing on their own lives.

            Society would not just survive the destruction of data centers, but in the long term would actually benefit. It would incentivize people to decentralize and democratize both data storage and compute, and the services that data centers currently provide would be better for it.

      • kreskin@lemmy.world
        11·
        15 days ago

        if Lemmy stopped existing I’d read a book or go outside. I might even drink a beer with friends. It wouldnt be so bad, I bet.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
    1·
    15 days ago

    You know what happens when a datacenter full of computers gets blown up? Nothing. Nothing at all. A cat getting hit by a car or the mcdonalds shake machine being broken is a far greater tragedy.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    18 days ago

    Datacentres have been potential targets for years. I remember some analysis from early in the war on Ukraine about targets in Western countries. Datacentres are vitally important for the economy, because of the businesses which are actually hosted there but also because of the infrastructure which supports other businesses.

    Nowadays it seems like everyone thinks data centres are just running ChatGPT, but that is very stupid. This thread is hosted on lemmy.world’s servers in one of hetzner’s datacentres. OP’s account is on feddit.org in a datacentre in Vienna.

    Your country’s banking system probably relies on datacentres. Your supermarkets probably rely on datacentres to get deliveries into stores. All your broadcast/streaming entertainment uses datacentres.