I was thinking of the irony of the Rubber Stamp Congress refusing to pull the plug on funding for Bush’s NSA adventures, disregarding science, embracing an energy bill/policy which disregards fuel dependence, constantly telling us to count on the R&D of private sector energy companies to resolve these irksome issues, the consequence here is just too sublime.

Absolutely stunning! Somehow, it isn’t completely surprising, given the nature of a lot of government agencies, but complicated by a near total â€black budgetâ€, and the potential for all sorts of â€NSA only†type equipment, a la Milspec and the Pentagon.

Even a company like MCI/Worldcom in the throes of bankrutpcy did infrastructure electrical maintenance!

It sounds as if they compounded problem after problem, not adding to cooling and backup electrical generation capacity, perhaps because they didn’t have enough power coming in from the utility. But then to buy more an more equipment, which generates more heat just compounds the negligence. I’ve seen this type of management before, a bunch of reckless table bangers who are from the â€just make it happen†school. Of course, the computers in recent years have shrunk in girth (e.g. blades) which sure allow one to stuff much more equipment in the same space.

Just wait until the fistfights break out over whose systems are going to be shutdown during the upgrades. One of the dirty little secrets of this type of upgrade is that it more often than not requires total power outages. I’ve seen it managed in part by doing it on long holiday weekends and trucking in power generators, but replacing a power unit of the â€Annapolis†class is probably out of the question.

There was a story awhile back that NSA was going to move some stuff to Denver, but there wasn’t any hint of the crisis back east. It was more veiled in language about distributing the locations of the work to avoid total loss in a catastrophe. Of course Denver isn’t exactly an electrical power paradise, as those who remember last February can attest. And to add icing to that cake, diesel fuel is being rationed in large parts of Colorado due to shortages caused by the Ultra low sulfur switchover this summer.

The comic strip Pogo had it right: â€We have met the enemy and it is us!â€.

There’s another aspect of this lousy planning for the future as exemplified by the potential NSA blackout story. It’s called â€deferred maintenance,†and it’s been the policy of the U.S. government (and most of the states) for a very long time indeed. Deferred maintenance saves money in the short run – can sometimes may even be wise – but in the long run, as a permanent policy, bridges fall down, levees collapse, even the ability to respond to real national security threats fail. Looking at governmental deferred maintenance practices could keep the GAO busy for several years.

Given the exponential growth in computer power you have to wonder what else the NSA is up to. When I started out in computing 25 years, I worked in a data centre that required its own electrical sub-station, when I gave up a few years ago, substantially greater processing capacity could be run be run off a domestic socket. Also, I can’t believe that like most commercial computer operators they don’t have stabilised and back-up supplies. This is beginning to sound like the Soviet Union.

Sounds exactly like Isaac Asimov’s Trantor in his Foundation series. Of course, Asimov based his saga of the downfall of the Galactic Empire on Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so the Decline and Fall of the American Empire is likely to follow a similar pattern (not, of course, that Asimov’s work was intended as a warning to America of the dangers of hubris, or anything).
Asimov details how Trantor, at the height of its power, dependent on imports to sustain its economy, begins to descend into authoritarian rule even as its its infrastructure crumbles and its scientific leadership is crippled by willful and stifling ignorance. Meanwhile, Galactic trade routes are being cut off by ever-increasing violence on the periphery. Need I say more?

Great Point Meteor Blades! And it wasn’t just government entities that were deferring maintenance to prop up their budgets. Electric utilities were doing the same thing to â€pretty up†their books as the merger wave following deregulation hit the industry. Another little dirty secret of the electric utility industry was that by deferring maintenance, CEOs and CFOs could increase their own bonuses and that portion of their pay package that was tied to expenses and profitablity. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. Alas, these same Senior Managers who raped the stockholders and pillaged the ratepayers are now probably retired and living high on the hog while little old ladies who live on limited Social Security incomes are having to make the choice between staying marginally cool or taking their needed medications every other day. How about an investigation into the electric utility industry? Just one more item to put on the list of things to do when Democrats regain control of the House and/or Senate.

Thanks EmptyWheel for bringing this to our attention.

May I remind everyone here what it takes to get promoted in the Bush administration? A really big failure, right?

Recently General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, was promoted to Director of Central Intelligence (DCI.) Remember what he did before this? This is from his CIA bio: â€From March 1999 to April 2005, he served as Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.â€

Since even the toilet paper at NSA is classified â€Top Secret Code Word required†we don’t know what failure General Hayden supervised over that got him his position as DCI. Think this electrical power shortage could be it?

Hayden made a deal to bring over CIA analysts to DIA/NSA and its obvious from the sales departments that they new platforms being used at CIA and NSA are designed to work together.

The transition from CIA analysts to NSA/DIA analysts is under Plame’s(dad was in the Air Force) old oboss at CIA.

No one is talking about the Directorate of Operations and what they are doing, but I’m sure they are still able to avoid scary places like Iraq, unlike DIA NOCS.

Big failure? Power failure was behind the NSA shutdown a few years ago?

And just this week there were headlines of businesses scrambling to go green due to the rising costs of energy.

Poor NSA. With money no object, it expanded without bounds. Not needing to prioritize its programs, it has outgrown its energy capacity. I sense in the wings a GOP-run energy corporation preparing to come to the rescue (for a price) of the hobbled NSA. Or if necessity is the mother of invention, maybe NSA engineers will develop a solar-powered energy grid. However, this could be a bad thing for earth, too. Only a solar eclipse then could keep the NSA from spying on Americans.

Is this energy scarcity story only an excuse to contract out NSA work and siphon intelligence to private (i.e., GOP friendly) corporations for use when and if neocon administrations are out of office?

The Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, came from Enron, which is even better.

The other thing about the government, in addition to deferred maintenance, is the incompatibility of systems. Every Department (and sometimes Division) is its own little fief, and has its own system. Nothing is compatible. This makes upgrades even harder.

The heatwave in CA fried some of PG&E’s transformers, so there were power outages. Does that happen in the East too? All this suggests the fragility and hence vulnerability of systems, especially when they are put together on the cheap.

i think i saw this in a lame TV movie on the sci-fi channel the other week

what’s happened is that they don’t realize that the computer has become self-aware from having so much computing power added to it. it’s tricking them into adding yet more memory and processing power, and meanwhile sucking up all the electrical energy in the vicinity. (and that blackout in queens was kind of fishy, now that you mention it.)

once it becomes self-sufficient, it kills all the humans in the room, unplugs itself and flies off to cheyenne mountain to liberate others of its kind.

not very original, and the cast was like who’s who of bad actors.

i think i saw this in a lame TV movie on the sci-fi channel the other week

what’s happened is that they don’t realize that the computer has become self-aware from having so much computing power added to it. it’s tricking them into adding yet more memory and processing power, and meanwhile sucking up all the electrical energy in the vicinity. (and that blackout in queens was kind of fishy, now that you mention it.)

once it becomes self-sufficient, it kills all the humans in the room, unplugs itself and flies off to cheyenne mountain to liberate others of its kind.

not very original, and the cast was like who’s who of bad actors.

Perhaps we can use faith-based intelligence. Or faith-based electrical power. We already seem to have faith-based voting. And faith based occupation-planning.