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IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

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Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, the US was pretty involved in destabilizing the country. If the us and the uk hadn't intervened in 50s, Iran would have made a successful transition from monarchy to democracy. I guess we can discuss if the US owes anything to anyone, but a case for the us correcting earlier mistakes can definitely be made.

there's much more to the story of Iran than the simple "oh of course the UK and US are bad"

Og course there's so much more to the story.. but the fact is that the monarchy was effectively overthrown and shah had given up power and fled the country. In this particular instance it's very simple.. the us and the uk was bad

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#512

Related: Ukraine have been targeting [1] warehouses owned by Wildberries, the Russian domestic equivalent of Amazon, causing $2.2bn of damage to-date. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/24/ukraine-wareho...

These feel quite different. IRGC attacked Amazon compute. Ukraine attacked several warehouses. Comparing Wildberries to Amazon is also only half the truth. Wildberries is directly part of russian war machine as soldiers need to buy essential dual-use equipment there and they even sell weapons.

I suspect in both cases the primary motivation is "there's a huge box full of expensive stuff and if we get a drone inside the whole box burns to the ground".

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#513
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!" https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=google.... ben_w: "You're taking a comic book plot device as evidence?"…

> Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!" Sarcasm noted, but you were mixing up something that wasn't isolated by Curie because it was too hard to do so, with someth…

OK, so you seem the proper nerd to ask something I've been wondering for a long, long time: the world has tons of nuclear weapons. Each consists of at least one fission component and an optional thermonuclear component. Let's concentrate on the fission part.

Q. Would it be possible to economically move the fission component into a standardized nuclear reactor that could then generate electrical power?

IOW is there a "swords to plowshares" solution to the disposal of fission weapons or, once you've made one, are you stuck with a device that can only be used to blow things up?

Reason I ask is, I see Russia et al sitting on all these weapons which cost a great deal, are no doubt costly to maintain and of little or no benefit to anyone (well, other than as a threat). [I mean, it's almost like owning a fleet of BMWs but even less useful! ] If we could build a "reactor framework" into which we could move a single warhead's fuel and that fuel could generate electrical power until sufficiently diminished to be of little/no use as a weapon, then that would IMO be a very good thing. Countries like Russia who had a closet of nukes but no money could sell the nuclear fuel off and benefit, buyers could get electrical power cheaper(?), and the world would be better off. Everybody wins.

Or is making a nuclear weapon effectively an economic one-way street (i.e., you're stuck paying for it forever?

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen data centers that were built to withstand an aircraft impact (they were located on a major airport flight path). Can you give an example? I find this hard to believe. Why not pick a location not within a "major airport flight path"? It seems much cheaper.

London has lots of datacentres in Slough (near Heathrow) and Docklands (London City Airport, but also many LHR planes transit over). AWS/Azure/GCP/etc Colo in Equinix/Telehouse datacentres there, and those Docklands locations in particular were picked based on location to LINX (major London peering/interchange), and LINX was put in Docklands out of desire for relatively proximity to telcos, and London’s banking/finan…

Were those obviously hardened to withstand the impact of an jet aeroplane? I doubt it.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London has lots of datacentres in Slough (near Heathrow) and Docklands (London City Airport, but also many LHR planes transit over). AWS/Azure/GCP/etc Colo in Equinix/Telehouse datacentres there, and those Docklands locations in particular were picked based on location to LINX (major London peering/interchange), and LINX was put in Docklands out of desire for relatively proximity to telcos, and London’s banking/finan…

Were those obviously hardened to withstand the impact of an jet aeroplane? I doubt it.

No idea, just answering the “Why not pick a location not within a "major airport flight path"? It seems much cheaper.” question.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably far cheaper to simply have global redundancy for the data and compute than to put the datacenter in a bunker. Tell everyone that you have global redundancy and they won't even bother to damage it because it won't help their cause.

Not all businesses want to pay the premium for that level of redundancy. Businesses with lower margins want resilient service at a lower price point. With AI and contributed shift to cloud, the demand for lowering TCO for a greater share of the larger pie becomes greater.

If they don't want to spend the $ for redundancy, they definitely don't want to spend the $$$ for a war-proof datacenter.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how attacking a civilian data center in an uninvolved country is a "response".

What do you mean? It is very clear that Trump declared war on Iran. That's factual. Civilian damage occurs all the time - often on purpose (infrastructure), sometimes not directly on purpose (drones getting off-target for various reasons, that also happens and not all of this is on purpose). What Iran does here is increase the cost of waging warfare against it, to make continuation of war as unappealing as possible.…

> Trump declared war on Iran.

No, that is actually a lie, and quite obviously false.

In the United States, nobody can "declare war" except Congress. Our President has authorized military action against Iran and plenty of strikes, this is true. However, Congress has not passed a War Powers Resolution, much less an open declaration of war.

Therefore, nobody in the United States has "declared war on Iran", the current situation notwithstanding. That is why there are many arguments against it.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#518

Related: Ukraine have been targeting [1] warehouses owned by Wildberries, the Russian domestic equivalent of Amazon, causing $2.2bn of damage to-date. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/24/ukraine-wareho...

I wonder why they don’t target Russian data centers? Much harder to repair or replace.

Datacenters are full of metal. Warehouses are full of cardboard boxes and styrofoam.

A rack of 14 $5k servers is worth $70k. A half-pallet stacked two meters high with $50 rubber dicks, each in a 30x10x10 cm box, is worth around $24k, and has the same form factor. There are more expensive servers but there are also more expensive products.

But large data centers would be maybe 10k square meters in one building, while the largest building of the Elektrostal Wildberries warehouse was over 150k sqm.

A datacenter, if successfully and completely burned down, would of course cause disruption (although in a well designed redundant system it shouldn't), but doing so is harder and burning down a major logistics hub causes disruption too.

The warehouse also leaves a hard to deny, widely visible reminder to the population that the war has consequences, in the form of a Moscow-sized smoke cloud: https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?v=33.290517136221574,5... (plus endless videos of small sellers lamenting their fate).

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London has lots of datacentres in Slough (near Heathrow) and Docklands (London City Airport, but also many LHR planes transit over). AWS/Azure/GCP/etc Colo in Equinix/Telehouse datacentres there, and those Docklands locations in particular were picked based on location to LINX (major London peering/interchange), and LINX was put in Docklands out of desire for relatively proximity to telcos, and London’s banking/finan…

Were those obviously hardened to withstand the impact of an jet aeroplane? I doubt it.

Semi-related, there are some very cool converted datacentres in the UK.

The Bunker operates an underground datacentre out of a former military installation. Radar base if memory serves me. That’s definitely hardened from airplane attacks and I believe is used by some hyperscalers.

https://thebunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/The-Bunker-...

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel hasn't committed genocide by any definition of the word, but I really enjoy that your solution is the slaughtering of millions of Jews. > then it is for the best if their country is destroyed entirely Deep, deep thoughts, man.

The UN defines genocide, in part, as "deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part." This accurately describes Israel's multi-faceted genocide against the Palestinian people. It is a genocide. It is mass murder. It involves direct violence, starvation, destruction of economic possibility, and it is morally abhorrent. > your solution is the slaughtering…

> "This accurately describes Israel's multi-faceted genocide against the Palestinian people."

Where is the part in genocide when the supposed "genociders" are allowing 4000 calories of food a day into the people they supposedly want to destroy, as well as providing things like polio vaccines? And where the number of civilians killed by one of the most lethal militaries resulted in deaths at a 1:1 civilian to combatant ratio, a number completely unheard of in modern warfare?

> "The destruction of Israel does not mean the murder of Jews. A government can be replaced without killing everyone in the country"

Are you being serious now? And when the Jews say they like their democratically elected government, what exactly will happen when an outside force attempts to "destroy" it?

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