Does Uncle Sam have Unlimited Computing Power?

My Boggle

I've been musing over something since we started hearing about confirmations to things ranging from Echelon to the inner workings of the NSA itself. It's a bit of a problem, actually, but no ready solution has come to me so it's been left as one of those things to fester in the back of my mind.

The Mystery

By way of comparisons for context, little is known about the Data centers Google requires and has built at key digital/geographic nexus points around the world. What has come out in magazines like Wired and others though, is that they are massive in both scale and expense. They're being added regularly enough to be remarkable on scale.....and they are just an internet company in the end.

The NSA is assimilating everything Google already does either directly or in parallel for baseline starting points, and then going much much further to basically be their own Search Engine to everything. ...Google requires many of these cutting edge, high tech data super centers...to do much less.

So where are the NSA's data processing centers? NOT storage and NOT archiving centers, but processing centers? They need whole Super-Centers just for archiving and they have them. Tooele, Utah and Ft Meade among them.

An Answer?

So what got my bunny whiskers to twitching? Well, it was a lightbulb moment as I was looking for something else entirely and everything clicked. Where is the processing network to put Google to rightful shame?

Has anyone considered some degree of the distributed computing network? Imagine ...how would you, the user, really KNOW that's SETI being run? (as a random example with no special meaning) The whole purpose of distributed computing is near unlimited power across vast areas by simply using the idle time of computers no one is using or looking at anyway.

Wouldn't that just be the ultimate conspiracy to discover had truth to it?

Happy New Year into a brave new world...I think.

Wrabbit2000
/i] to basically be their own Search Engine to everything. ...Google requires many of these cutting edge, high tech data super centers...to do much less.


Has anyone considered some degree of the distributed computing network? Imagine ...how would you, the user, really KNOW that's SETI being run? (as a random example with no special meaning) The whole purpose of distributed computing is near unlimited power across vast areas by simply using the idle time of computers no one is using or looking at anyway.

Wouldn't that just be the ultimate conspiracy to discover had truth to it?

Happy New Year into a brave new world...I think.

Thing is it is not all idle time, the feet were on the street, that is the big finance.

I think if you only restricted yourself to Government computers you would still have masses of computing power. Intercept the shipments of new computers destined for government departments, add some hardware / software and you are good to go. I have always wondered why so many Govt. employees are told to not turn off their computers.

P

For use of distributed systems you need both the quantity and the time to use them, theres little point in using some persons machine who only switches it on for 20-30 mins a day as synching will waste more effort than its worth etc, its why the NSA built their billion dollar data center as they cant rely on people for free cpu cycles and also people are more alert on whatsusing their cpu these days