When I look at the multi-billion dollar NSA datacenter in Utah... I can't help but realize that the annual IT budget at Google or one of the big financial companies dwarfs that number, and does so every year.
Sorry, my point is that Google and Goldman Sachs et al spend several times the NSA's big multi-year project every single year.
As in, that datacenter ran the NSA ~$2 billion to build, but those companies are spending several times that every year on IT alone.
I'm reminded of the SEC whose yearly budget is several times smaller than even a single large banks IT budget.
I guess the NSA could have as astronomical black budget and is creating such an enormous amount of hidden demand that the market is that effected... but where's the datacenters holding that market-shifting amount of harddrives?
Even the one being built isn't as impressive as some of the Google/Facebook datacenters popping up, so it seems ridiculous to me that the US Gov is affecting HDD prices when Google/Facebook/Banks et al are not.
Good point - thank you. I suspect you are right in orders of magnitude - we will not really know the exact figures, but I suspect that Intel suddenly building a new plant to cope with demand that no-one can explain would get noticed by the financial analysts (well, the good ones anyway)
Apparently the NSA has been buying every platter available via unlimited taxpayer dollars.
Sounds like a joke but think about it...