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Amazon also has a lot of government work these days for DoD and intelligence services with AWS. So I imagine that's another motivator for the location. That area of VA will be a great spot to recruit people with the right clearances and backgrounds.

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That's right. Tons of contractors want to build into GovCloud as well, which will be exploding in the near future. They already have tons of data centers in Northern Virginia due to its proximity to ISPs and the federal government.

They (data centers) are not in Nova because the government is there, but rather because it has the lowest insurance costs in the Continental US.

Is that the major factor? I'd thought it was more:

* Proximity to low latency backbone connections (originally located there due to government agencies)

* Tax incentives by VA

* Low risk area for disasters

* Cheap power

* Available land

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