The article may be using the term 'machine' differently than what the HN community is used to.
In the Army we used similar technologies for planning, and the technologies were kept on SECRET computers that could only connect to the SIPRNET (an intranet for secret material). Because of the nature of the work we used to wipe and reimage the HDD's frequently (in training environments it was wiped and reimaged after each training session). I image each of those wipes/reimages might count against the 558k count of infringements.