<story><title>Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/technology/dod-jedi-contract.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>meddlepal</author><text>Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I&amp;#x27;ve met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.</text></item><item><author>gtirloni</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;why-texas-has-its-own-power-grid.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;why-texas-has-it...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>rshnotsecure</author><text>Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA.&lt;p&gt;The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay for the NSA. Additionally, and the FBI chose San Antonio for a significant presence as well because of this, is Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US.&lt;p&gt;Also San Antonio has something like 4 military bases. Ft. Sam Houston where the Army medics train, Lackland Air Force Base (home of cybercommand for the Air Force), Kelley Air Force Base, and perhaps even 1 or 2 I can’t recall.&lt;p&gt;120 minutes to the north is the recently established Army Futures Command in Austin, along with Ft. Hood in Killeen, the Army’s largest base in the world.&lt;p&gt;AWS does not currently have a data center in Texas, which has always frustrated the Texas government. They did establish a shipping center in San Marcos, but even GCO is building out in Dallas where IBM Cloud has a data center, and Oracle Cloud has an Austin data center.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roenxi</author><text>~ I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.&lt;p&gt;Large groups of people are so embarrassingly bad at predicting the future that I&amp;#x27;m always impressed when they get it right; but trying to do so often has a lot of positive side effects. Being ready to secede is a stupid one, but as a metaphor for &amp;quot;something goes wrong and we can&amp;#x27;t rely on people 1,000km away to provide for us&amp;quot; it would lead to some excellent planning.&lt;p&gt;Modern society is extremely efficient, extremely cheap and &lt;i&gt;profoundly&lt;/i&gt; untested. We&amp;#x27;ve had commercial electricity for 15 decades, the internet for 3 decades and quality GPS for 2. These are not long times on the scale that a country&amp;#x27;s logistics channels operate at; because things so central to how we work need to be ready for 1 in 100 and 1 in 200 year style events. Excessive caution may not actually be excessive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/technology/dod-jedi-contract.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>meddlepal</author><text>Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I&amp;#x27;ve met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.</text></item><item><author>gtirloni</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;why-texas-has-its-own-power-grid.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slate.com&amp;#x2F;news-and-politics&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;why-texas-has-it...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>rshnotsecure</author><text>Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA.&lt;p&gt;The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay for the NSA. Additionally, and the FBI chose San Antonio for a significant presence as well because of this, is Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US.&lt;p&gt;Also San Antonio has something like 4 military bases. Ft. Sam Houston where the Army medics train, Lackland Air Force Base (home of cybercommand for the Air Force), Kelley Air Force Base, and perhaps even 1 or 2 I can’t recall.&lt;p&gt;120 minutes to the north is the recently established Army Futures Command in Austin, along with Ft. Hood in Killeen, the Army’s largest base in the world.&lt;p&gt;AWS does not currently have a data center in Texas, which has always frustrated the Texas government. They did establish a shipping center in San Marcos, but even GCO is building out in Dallas where IBM Cloud has a data center, and Oracle Cloud has an Austin data center.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>One if my favorite season finales ever: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;xFgNZG3gmqc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;xFgNZG3gmqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The people with this view are also a big and growing minority: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;texaspolitics.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;texan-first-american-second&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;texaspolitics.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;texan-first-american-s...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 40 percent identify as Texans before they identify as Americans, far outpacing any other age group.</text></comment>