[oceanplexian]

Want a real conspiracy?

What do you think the NSA is storing in that datacenter in Utah? Power point presentations? All that data is going to be trained into large models. Every phone call you ever had and every email you ever wrote. They are likely pumping enormous money into it as we speak, probably with the help of OpenAI, Microsoft and friends.

[sangnoir]

> What do you think the NSA is storing in that datacenter in Utah?

A buffer with several-days-worth of the entire internet's traffic for post-hoc decryption/analysis/filtering on interesting bits. All that tapped backbone/undersea cable traffic has to be stored somewhere.

[choilive]

As I understand it, they don't have the capability to essentially PCAP all that data.. and the data wouldn't be that useful since most interesting traffic is encrypted as well. Instead they store the metadata around the traffic. Phone number X made an outgoing call to Y @ timestamp A, call ended at timestamp B, approximate location is Z, etc. Repeat that for internet IP addresses do some analysis and then you can build a pretty interesting web of connections and how they interact.

[fragmede]

> most interesting traffic is encrypted as well

encrypted with an algorithm currently considered to be un-brute-forcible. If you presume we'll be able to decrypt today's encrypted transmissions in, say, 50-100 years, I'd record the encrypted transmission if I were the NSA.

[michaelt]

It's a big data centre.

But is it big enough to store 50 years worth of encrypted transmissions?

Far cheaper to simply have spies infiltrate the ~3 companies that hold the keys to 98% of internet traffic.

[fragmede]

Of everyone's? No. But enough to store the signal messages of the President, down a couple of levels? I hope so. After I'm dead, I hope the messages between the President, his cabinet, and their immediate contacts that weren't previously accessible get released to historians.

[beau_g]

Though it seems like something that could exist, who is doing the technical work/programming? It seems impossible to be in the industry and not have associates and colleagues either from or going to an operation like that. This is what I've always pondered about when it comes to any idea like this. The number of engineers at the pointy end of the tech spear is pretty small.

[berniedurfee]

It would be absolutely fascinating to talk to the LLMs of the various government spy agencies around the world.

[fragmede]

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/03/the-pentagons-silicon-va...

If they actually worked, that is.

[setiverse]

I am not sure why this would even be a conspiracy.

They would almost be failing in their purpose if they were not doing this.

On the other hand, this is an incredibly tough signal to noise problem. I am not sure we really understand what kind of scaling properties this would have as far as finding signals.