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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Buying an antidrone and even antimissile system like say Pantsir-S1, Skyranger 30 or similar is just few million dollars - peanuts compare to the cost of the datacenter to be protected. Once AMAZN starts doing it for themselves, they will possibly also start air-defense-as-a-service using spare capacity.

With all the money and assets and the whole value of business, the Big Tech has already started to move into energy, and i think the defense, starting with self-defense, will be among the nearest-future next domains they will move into.

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I dunno about defense as a service since those are pretty short range systems you mentioned (how would someone go "buy" excess capacity), but datacenters already cluster around common resources (water, etc.) so group buying some equipment to put in a ring around the datacenter area seems like it would be what they do.

Yeah the use consumer grade rocket components made SpaceX become viable compared to bloated rocket companies. Short range anti missile systems are not large ordinance, they rely a lot on technology for tracking targeting, and they are not a "weapon" (as in they prevent damage not cause it except inadvertently) so it actually seems like something pretty feasible for a tech company. Build it with consumer grade hardware and you could deploy a ton of them.

On a mobile platform though…

Rentable defense is already a thing, but rapidly deployable mini-interceptors like Anduril and many others, or electronic countermeasures could plausibly become much more widespread.

>electronic countermeasures could plausibly become much more widespread.

don't forget the amount of power available in the datacenter. You can easily redirect say just mere megawatts to electronic countermeasures (would shut everything around down) or microwave and laser weapons. That for example is just 60KWt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvQV7Mt02q4

I guess I am splitting hairs but "spare capacity" heavily implies it's a non physical resource or it's able to be used in an instant. Almost like how if you had a global based missile system like a GBI (or not quite global but long range like a THAAD) you could near instantly have someone "bid" to use your missiles in an emergency scenario. Building short range interceptors and selling them or renting them is closer to the model of AWS itself, building a knowledge base hosting your own platform (Amazon.com retail) and then selling that knowledge to others. In this case building anti missile systems to protect data centers and then selling a packaged model to other companies. But it's not "spare capacity", it's selling expertise and helping to fund your own R&D.

If everyone has an antidrone/antimissile system, then everyone will finally be safe.

the previous world order based on sovereign states is quickly coming to end. Emerging world order is based on force, and the large corps have more money than many states. The only thing they are missing is the rights of a sovereign entity. Well in a world order driven by force, the rights you have is the rights that you've obtained by force. I think we'll soon see, by analogy with corporate personhood, some version of corporate statehood.

I don't think it happens quite that distinctly in the world we live in now (technology, etc.). It's not like a big tech company can go attain the same direct power as the East India company way back in the day. It's much more likely that companies continue to gain lobbying and "soft" power that directs the military into doing things. Large corps do have more money than many countries, so if a huge company wants to setup manufacturing or gain benefits in a smaller country they do have outsized power, but its rare that a huge company has more power than their own country from what I know (potentially oil companies are the exception which is why national oil companies seem to have so much weight in so many countries). For example sure the big tech companies are very powerful, but the US military budget per year is still nearly the same size as the largest tech companies market cap. Whereas you are right that a US big tech company has more revenue than say...Guatemala, or Morocco.

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