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secondary_op 4 minutes ago [-]
The US has made no secret its desire to dominate the future by dominating key technology shaping it - especially artificial intelligence (AI);
Eric Schmidt of Google, currently enabling Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia, had publicly discussed "China" striking US data centers to prevent a game-changing breakthrough - however it was projection meaning the US proposing striking data centers in other nations (especially China but also Russia);
Through the vast network of proxies the US maintains worldwide & the failure of multipolarism to defend against or rollback US political capture, the US can freely strike at data centers/, slowing AI development while advancing AI at home free of threat;
4729738210 31 seconds ago [-]
Cry harder, ruzzian bitch
renyicircle 34 minutes ago [-]
Damn, this would have been a good argument for the US to fund Ukrainian long-distance operations, had Russia not been so far behind in the AI race already.
petcat 24 minutes ago [-]
USA provides extensive engineering support and technology transfer for Ukraine's domestic development of long-range missiles. Basically everything short of just giving them Tomahawks. Ukraine's defense industry capabilities didn't develop so rapidly for no reason.
And the quality of targeting is almost entirely because of extensive USA intelligence sharing:
> According to American and Ukrainian officials familiar with the operations:
> Ukraine selects targets, although American intelligence reportedly also helps identify high-priority facilities.
> The US identifies vulnerabilities at Russian energy installations.
> American intelligence assists with mission planning, including routes, altitude, and timing to help Ukrainian drones evade Russian air defenses.
> US involvement extends across multiple stages of planning, according to three people familiar with the operations.
Seems like a mistake to stagger these hits, doing both in the same hour could have taken out backups before they had a chance to replicate elsewhere.
SXX 43 minutes ago [-]
Russia dont have that many large datacenters and replacing them is both damn hard and expensive.
Also unlike in Ukraine local organizations are required to run on infrastructure inside country by law and even major peering points are very centralised. Connections between Russia and other countries are even more centralised.
So it doesnt matter in what order datacenters going to be destroyed. Ukraine just need to take down enough of them.
HarHarVeryFunny 5 minutes ago [-]
A lot of the smaller drones that Ukraine is using only do limited damage - they may start a fire than can spread, but not doing to destroy an entire larger facility (although the Flamingo can do significant damage). Many Russian energy facilities just get hit repeatedly over time - Russia will fix as fast as they can. Staggering hits seems to make sense.
chmod775 36 minutes ago [-]
There's little difference between 1 hour and 48 hours when it comes to the amount of data in question here.
tokai 33 minutes ago [-]
Backups don't matter at all if you can destroy the hardware. Yandex is not rebuilding this at meaningful price, and if they do Ukrainians just burn it down again.
bbor 42 minutes ago [-]
To be clear, it seems like two different datacenters, and the first attack alone seems to have been wildly successful already, burning down ~1/3rd of the entire building (!!!). Some of the reported outages:
The most serious disruptions were reported in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where users also experienced problems with T-Bank, internet provider SkyNet, and the Mango Office cloud service... Yandex Disk, Yandex Documents, and other company services... online bus-ticket sales in the Moscow region [via] MosTransAvto... Several major Russian media websites, including RBC, RIA Novosti, Kommersant, Vedomosti, Interfax, and Vesti... Russian Railways...
And all that's before this attack. We'll see what the extent is, I guess.
So I'd say the goal here is to intimidate and/or inconvenience the Russian public and general economy, which is the main way they'll advance a war against a country they are forbidden from invading to any semi-meaningful degree (due to nukes). Permenantly destroying data would be nice, sure, but service interruption is already such a huge win that it'd be a marginal improvement only, IMHO.
That is, unless there are cloud-native banks without backups, which... yikes! Possible, I suppose?
SXX 38 minutes ago [-]
Russia started to very actively hit Ukraine datacanters a month ago. So everyone sane likely had some backups by now because they knew this is going to happen.
bpodgursky 56 minutes ago [-]
Taking out GPUs is more important than storage nowdays.
jameshart 35 minutes ago [-]
Replacing the RAM is going to be expensive
lapkaaaa 1 hours ago [-]
New Startup idea - private anti-air batteries for data centers
The US State Department will throw everything at you if you dare tried to build or possess your own guided guns and rockets, even if you were not from or in the US - because there was a US ally that exported a near-orbital solid motor sounding rocket to a Balkan nation with full factory setup and manufacturing training services without asking anybody in particular, which resulted in the recipient nation achieving prototype production and successful live fire tests of an indigenous surface to air missile system comparable to Soviet S-75 strategic SAM that was eventually selected.
If it weren't for those pile of laws and leverages... building a SAM was doable since 1950s.
Legend2440 1 hours ago [-]
Unironically could be a legit business model.
Not just for datacenters either - warehouses, refineries, power stations, you could sell to anybody with a building full of expensive stuff.
throwaway85825 36 minutes ago [-]
In some countries maybe, but in west where all the valuable infrastructure is there is absolutely no way you could get a permit to shoot down anything.
Legend2440 26 minutes ago [-]
Obviously your biggest customers would be in active warzones, or areas worried about soon becoming warzones.
Drone attacks on US soil are (hopefully!) not happening anytime soon.
jcfrei 28 minutes ago [-]
believe it or not but legislation can change pretty quickly when shit actually hits the fan
rithdmc 22 minutes ago [-]
I'm waiting for someone to try the self defense angle :)
mrweasel 55 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it issue is selling in the current climate, producing seems like the major roadblock. If Russia, the supposed number one in air defence can't even protect their military bases, ramping up production might be hard.
jameshart 36 minutes ago [-]
Oil tankers..
klvino 22 minutes ago [-]
Releasing drone swarms wrapping in chaff with IR lamps or laser diodes to account for different guidance methods. They cluster around predicted trajectory. Could be more cost effective than a Patriot battery
yolp5 27 minutes ago [-]
I saw a video the other day advertising AI-powered a anti-air/dronr gun. Seems to be part of a defense trade show, but also seemed to indicate that it was available to certain "qualified" citizens, but I'm not sure what that means exactly
RealityVoid 51 minutes ago [-]
There surely is a point where it's cheaper and safer to bury them underground.
I'd invest in digging equipment for the next war.
clan 42 minutes ago [-]
Look up the capabilities of GBU-28 and other Bunker Busters first.
Legend2440 25 minutes ago [-]
These are a lot more expensive and difficult to deploy. They weigh several tons. You can't just strap one to a $200 quadcopter and fly it over.
numpad0 18 minutes ago [-]
You don't dig a hole deep enough that Bunker Busters can't penetrate. You drive up to the root of a mountain where it meets flats and drill sideways. Getting your men out in case the entrance was bombed can be tricky though.
RealityVoid 26 minutes ago [-]
The current crop of "cruise missiles" are cheap and low penetration. Burying things is not 100% safe, but it certainly increases the attack difficulty.
jcfrei 26 minutes ago [-]
to use a GBU-28 or similar you need to establish air superiority first
rithdmc 21 minutes ago [-]
Cyberbunker was shut down too soon.
bookofjoe 29 minutes ago [-]
"Silo"
delecti 53 minutes ago [-]
I'm extremely surprised that isn't already a thing. I'm similarly surprised that all the datacenters which get press for the negative impact on the surrounding communities have remained untouched.
flohofwoe 26 minutes ago [-]
It is, or at least it's expected that Russian companies get their own air defense:
I look forward to anthropic drone swarms defending against AWS mounted infantry and OpenAI cruise drones. SpaceX is at war with Pepsi. SpaceX had always been at war with Pepsi.
odiroot 52 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like Snow Crash becoming slowly a reality.
tokai 36 minutes ago [-]
Russian companies have had mercenaries of different kinds for some time now. Im sure Redut has anti air batteries.
throwaway85825 35 minutes ago [-]
Much of this was taken back into government control after Wagner shot down government helicopters and a plane.
tokai 25 minutes ago [-]
No, only Wagner. Redut is controlled by GRU, but its not financed by the russian state. And beside fighting in Ukrain they still provide security for the russian oil industry. Like how US mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan took orders from MOD, while being private entries.
idontwantthis 39 minutes ago [-]
Russia recently ordered corporations to start funding their own air defense.
toomuchtodo 42 minutes ago [-]
You can always exhaust anti air defenses faster than they can defend if sufficiently prepared. Decoys help, just as you would with an intercontinental ballistic missile. Defender has to succeed 100% of the time, attacker needs to succeed once.
If your strategy assumes you can succeed against Iron Dome (which, I argue, is the state of the art for available air defense system), you should always be able to win as an attacker. Just have to test defenses ahead of time to understand level of effort required (munition capabilities, cadence, and quantity required, broadly speaking).
More DCs are than obviously required for the battery stores that these laser turrets will shoot.
Obelisks from Command and Conquer pinned to the roof of the DC would be amusing although personally I'm leaning towards prism towers.
toomuchtodo 34 minutes ago [-]
The fundamental challenge is that it will never be economically feasible to provide the necessary defense hardware at scale. Iran beat back the US military (“most powerful military in the world” quote unquote) and Ukraine Russia’s military on a shoestring budget. You can protect some targets some or most of the time, you cannot protect all potential targets all of the time.
If someone wants to take out a data center, they will likely succeed assuming they have the resources (probably military drones, but perhaps more traditional ballistic artillery). The world has become a more dangerous, volatile, and unpredictable place, for gestures broadly at everything reasons.
(thoughts, opinions, and threat model always my own)
outside1234 24 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't work. They would just send enough drones to overwhelm it or run it out of ammos or Russia out of money. This is the lesson we are learning the hard way in the Middle East.
HlessClaudesman 22 minutes ago [-]
New Startup idea - railgun that launches dictators and fascists into the sun.
ahartmetz 18 minutes ago [-]
Giant leap for mankind
InsideOutSanta 21 minutes ago [-]
Kickstarter? I'll contribute.
cheney_2004 49 minutes ago [-]
The last thing we need is more Silicon Valley funded military startups. This means the ecosystem is now profiting off of war, suffering, war crimes, and human death. What we need is startups focusing on peace and diplomacy. That solves way more problems in a net positive manner.
Arubis 40 minutes ago [-]
The irony of your username is not lost on me.
That said, I’m in agreement in principle. A lot of what you’re asking for is statecraft, and doing that with a profit model is brittle to corruption. But I’d greatly prefer to see folks trying to build things on hope then on bloodshed.
libertine 17 minutes ago [-]
What do you suggest for Ukraine? What's their alternative if they don't want to be forced to become a Belarus?
cindyllm 27 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
drewg123 24 minutes ago [-]
How effective are the western embargos? Will it be possible for them to replace destroyed hardware?
tryauuum 4 minutes ago [-]
great question, I don't have a good answer. supposedly there are gpus, here you can rent a H200 (a GPU which was released after the war had started)
https://selectel.ru/services/dedicated/hgx-h200/
But how many of them exist and how easy is to replace, I have no idea
ACCount39 8 minutes ago [-]
Will it be possible? Yes. Will it be easy, or cheap? No.
As is often the case, embargoes don't make things impossible - but they do add friction. Longer lead times, "grey market partner" premiums. People who supply Russian companies with hardware get to pad their pockets - and while they have ties in Russia, for obvious reasons, they prefer to keep those padded pockets outside Russia itself.
It's even worse for bleeding edge in-demand extra-controlled hardware like modern AI systems.
bayindirh 22 minutes ago [-]
I use ARM VPSes for quite some time and they are pretty performant. They don't have to replace with x86 systems. Linux on ARM is pretty mature and production ready at this point.
drewg123 15 minutes ago [-]
Seems like GPUs and RAM/NAND are the problem, and that's a common problem for arm64 and x86
bayindirh 12 minutes ago [-]
I don't know the hardware inside the data center, and it might not be a "AI" data center to begin with. NAND is a big problem, but DDR4 memory is not AFAICS, and if you need CPU power for serving stuff, getting it is easy.
If you need high performance or AI operations... GLHF!
biesnecker 23 minutes ago [-]
China is not part of the embargo, so I suspect commodity server and networking hardware isn't hard to come by.
brianwawok 22 minutes ago [-]
Computers aint cheap right now off the shelf. Can't imagine the embargo busting surcharge.
HackerThemAll 14 minutes ago [-]
It'll be much harder to replace lost data than destroyed hardware.
thinkcontext 1 hours ago [-]
Interesting to see this and the targeting of data centers in the Middle East. Its critical infrastructure and a hit gets the attacker a lot of bang for the buck in terms of economic damage.
bayindirh 44 minutes ago [-]
From what I see, these are the "tit" part of the "tit for tat" strategy. Neither Ukraine, nor Iran targeted these in the beginning, however when other side started to escalate, both replied by attacking more critical infrastructure for the other party.
HarHarVeryFunny 13 minutes ago [-]
I seem to recall that this is optimal game theoretic strategy - don't initiate, but always immediately retaliate.
Whatever is happening now is payback for Putin's birthday present to himself from 2 days ago, firing a missile into a Ukrainian apartment building that killed 22 civilians (mostly women & children).
dizhn 34 minutes ago [-]
I heard from friends that a lot Ukraine's large distribution centers were also hit lately after Ukraine hit Russia's.
I haven't seen any site I frequent mention this once. The PR bubble is very real.
olexsmir 4 minutes ago [-]
Russia has been hitting civilian logistics centers for years now. At least 2 of my packages were destroyed :C
stickfigure 23 minutes ago [-]
That's because it's nonsense. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian civilian logistics for years.
tokai 31 minutes ago [-]
You frequent bad sites then. Don't make a conspiracy based on your own bad media consumption.
idontwantthis 41 minutes ago [-]
Ukraine has been at war for 4 years. They didn’t have the capability to hit Russia this hard and deep until fairly recently. These are mostly home grown weapons developed during the war.
bayindirh 23 minutes ago [-]
That's true, however they don't use this capability like it's infinite. They only utilize this when Russia does something similar or plans of doing something similar leaks.
I'm not a fan of wars, regardless of where they happen. OTOH, I still believe you can fight relatively clean or be an unethical bully. If the war is unavoidable, I prefer to be the former.
I also commend Ukraine's ingenuity and bravery, as well.
ifwinterco 18 minutes ago [-]
Still not necessarily wise to voluntarily escalate an air war when you have very little air defence. But hey what do I know
nixass 27 minutes ago [-]
Nebius Slack channels going wild now
outside1234 26 minutes ago [-]
They should consider withdrawing from Ukraine
pftburger 45 minutes ago [-]
Am I the only one thinking just blurring the site is a little naive? It's relatively trivial to extrapolate the centers of the blobs from a blur. Pretty strange thing picking up a ticket to obfuscate your company's data centers on the map to protect them against drone attacks and then kind of just phoning it in
idontwantthis 42 minutes ago [-]
What are you referring to?
doublerabbit 48 seconds ago [-]
Yandex has hidden their other data centres on Google Maps with a censored block rather than just removing the location with a desert view.
What is a Russian citizen supposed to do? I fear most Russians will just turn on Ukraine, as now they have tangible "evidence" that maybe Putin was right all along.
The ideal is turning on Putin, but what does that even look like? The guy has 9 layers of isolation, a carefully curated and frequently culled leadership, and a robust propaganda department.
So at the breaking point, will Russians storm the capital or storm Ukraine?
squidbeak 33 minutes ago [-]
> So at the breaking point, will Russians storm the capital or storm Ukraine?
It seems to have somehow escaped your notice that Russia has been storming Ukraine for almost 5 years.
1970-01-01 5 minutes ago [-]
The problem is Russians are too afraid to turn on their motherland because "reasons" but that is exactly what has to happen to end the war. Hard to take medicine is indeed hard to take at first, but things are not getting better without it.
binlog 27 minutes ago [-]
> I fear most Russians will just turn on Ukraine
As opposed to right now where they are the best of friends?
AlienRobot 36 seconds ago [-]
What are you talking about? Russians are at war with Ukraine. Putin isn't the one marching and operating the tanks.
rjsw 14 minutes ago [-]
Prigozhin had the chance to do something but bottled out.
renyicircle 30 minutes ago [-]
> I fear most Russians will just turn on Ukraine
In which ways does the situation where "most Russians turn on Ukraine" differ from the current reality?
olexsmir 25 minutes ago [-]
I think you missed the news, war is going on for 5 years already, and yet russians don't do jack shit about it
stickfigure 32 minutes ago [-]
Ask Nicholas II.
cmrdporcupine 4 minutes ago [-]
"For the love of god, won't somebody think of the oppressor?!"
darkwi11ow 30 minutes ago [-]
There are two points to answer this question.
First is that the majority of russian population supports the war, and the number of russians that are anti-war now but can become supporters of an aggression as results of these strikes is negligible.
Second, the opinion of citizen does not count in russia anyway. It is an opinion of oligarchs and people in control that matters. Putin and his cronies are in their 70s and will go away soon. Whoever replaces the fuhrer and his clique needs to understand that messing with Ukraine is very costly affair. The more destruction is unleashed on russia now, the less bellirigent it will be in the future.
speransky 32 minutes ago [-]
Russian citizens have no voice anyway, so their opinion isn’t a part of equation about strikes planning. 90% of them support aggression anyway
Grollicus 28 minutes ago [-]
The war has public support in russia, even though russia is trying to genocide ukrainians (see Bucha). How much more can they "turn on Ukraine"?
pphysch 5 minutes ago [-]
How come no more "Buchas" happened in the war? How come the only "Bucha" happened after Russia withdrew in anticipation of a peace agreement that was heavily opposed by UK and others?
After Nord Stream, we all know what those maniacs are capable of.
And the quality of targeting is almost entirely because of extensive USA intelligence sharing:
> According to American and Ukrainian officials familiar with the operations:
> Ukraine selects targets, although American intelligence reportedly also helps identify high-priority facilities.
> The US identifies vulnerabilities at Russian energy installations.
> American intelligence assists with mission planning, including routes, altitude, and timing to help Ukrainian drones evade Russian air defenses.
> US involvement extends across multiple stages of planning, according to three people familiar with the operations.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-intelligence-helps-u...
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/drone-and-data-ce...
Also unlike in Ukraine local organizations are required to run on infrastructure inside country by law and even major peering points are very centralised. Connections between Russia and other countries are even more centralised.
So it doesnt matter in what order datacenters going to be destroyed. Ukraine just need to take down enough of them.
So I'd say the goal here is to intimidate and/or inconvenience the Russian public and general economy, which is the main way they'll advance a war against a country they are forbidden from invading to any semi-meaningful degree (due to nukes). Permenantly destroying data would be nice, sure, but service interruption is already such a huge win that it'd be a marginal improvement only, IMHO.
That is, unless there are cloud-native banks without backups, which... yikes! Possible, I suppose?
The US State Department will throw everything at you if you dare tried to build or possess your own guided guns and rockets, even if you were not from or in the US - because there was a US ally that exported a near-orbital solid motor sounding rocket to a Balkan nation with full factory setup and manufacturing training services without asking anybody in particular, which resulted in the recipient nation achieving prototype production and successful live fire tests of an indigenous surface to air missile system comparable to Soviet S-75 strategic SAM that was eventually selected.
If it weren't for those pile of laws and leverages... building a SAM was doable since 1950s.
Not just for datacenters either - warehouses, refineries, power stations, you could sell to anybody with a building full of expensive stuff.
Drone attacks on US soil are (hopefully!) not happening anytime soon.
I'd invest in digging equipment for the next war.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/28/russia-lets-privat...
If your strategy assumes you can succeed against Iron Dome (which, I argue, is the state of the art for available air defense system), you should always be able to win as an attacker. Just have to test defenses ahead of time to understand level of effort required (munition capabilities, cadence, and quantity required, broadly speaking).
https://missilethreat.csis.org/countermeasures-penetration-a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
Obelisks from Command and Conquer pinned to the roof of the DC would be amusing although personally I'm leaning towards prism towers.
If someone wants to take out a data center, they will likely succeed assuming they have the resources (probably military drones, but perhaps more traditional ballistic artillery). The world has become a more dangerous, volatile, and unpredictable place, for gestures broadly at everything reasons.
(thoughts, opinions, and threat model always my own)
That said, I’m in agreement in principle. A lot of what you’re asking for is statecraft, and doing that with a profit model is brittle to corruption. But I’d greatly prefer to see folks trying to build things on hope then on bloodshed.
But how many of them exist and how easy is to replace, I have no idea
As is often the case, embargoes don't make things impossible - but they do add friction. Longer lead times, "grey market partner" premiums. People who supply Russian companies with hardware get to pad their pockets - and while they have ties in Russia, for obvious reasons, they prefer to keep those padded pockets outside Russia itself.
It's even worse for bleeding edge in-demand extra-controlled hardware like modern AI systems.
If you need high performance or AI operations... GLHF!
Whatever is happening now is payback for Putin's birthday present to himself from 2 days ago, firing a missile into a Ukrainian apartment building that killed 22 civilians (mostly women & children).
I haven't seen any site I frequent mention this once. The PR bubble is very real.
I'm not a fan of wars, regardless of where they happen. OTOH, I still believe you can fight relatively clean or be an unethical bully. If the war is unavoidable, I prefer to be the former.
I also commend Ukraine's ingenuity and bravery, as well.
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/satellite-images-re...
>Scottish independence accounts go dark after Iran internet blackout
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/12/scottish-ind...
The ideal is turning on Putin, but what does that even look like? The guy has 9 layers of isolation, a carefully curated and frequently culled leadership, and a robust propaganda department.
So at the breaking point, will Russians storm the capital or storm Ukraine?
It seems to have somehow escaped your notice that Russia has been storming Ukraine for almost 5 years.
As opposed to right now where they are the best of friends?
In which ways does the situation where "most Russians turn on Ukraine" differ from the current reality?
Second, the opinion of citizen does not count in russia anyway. It is an opinion of oligarchs and people in control that matters. Putin and his cronies are in their 70s and will go away soon. Whoever replaces the fuhrer and his clique needs to understand that messing with Ukraine is very costly affair. The more destruction is unleashed on russia now, the less bellirigent it will be in the future.
After Nord Stream, we all know what those maniacs are capable of.