Analysis of Data Center Strikes

But still, that left the question for me about what

strikes actually hit what data

centers. And NASA has all these satellites

that pick up heat from fires all over

the world, and it posts all of that raw data on a website called FIRMS.

First, I had to find out where the data centers

were, so I went to a website called

openstreetmap.com, and it's this free map

that anyone can access

or edit, really. It's kind of like Wikipedia, but for maps.

And I found where people had labeled all three of the Yandex data center sites.

So I copied their exact coordinates and I threw them over on the fire map.

I first pasted the coordinates for Sasovo, then set the date for the night of the

strike, and there it was. I saw a couple of red squares right on top

of the

factory complex where Yandex's data center sits, and two different satellites

caught it, one at about 3:20 in the morning,

and the other at 4:05 in the morning

Moscow time. Then I put in Kaluga's coordinates,

and nothing.

Same for Vladimir's coordinates.

I didn't see anything on top of those data centers, and I did it for a week on

both sides of the night that the claims about those data

centers being hit were. Well, that's a red flag.

I went to check to see if the computers actually stopped working.

And luckily for us, Georgia Tech runs this great project

called the IODA, and it

knocks on every door of every network around the world every 10 minutes

and counts

who answers. And after Sasovo, about a third of it stopped answering.

And then after the alleged Vladimir drone strike, about four out of every five

machines had gone silent, and as of this week,

it looks like they're still

silent. But it's important to note that the green line never moved,

which means

that Yandex is still telling the internet where those machines are, so

the roads are open to those machines. The machines just aren't answering the

door.

The tricky thing here is that these two pieces of data

are telling two

different stories, right? Because one is showing what burned, and the other is

showing what stopped working. But that doesn't necessarily mean that

one caused the other. In the case of Sasovo, it kinda does.

It shows that the building burned, and then it went dark.

So I feel comfortable saying for sure that that strike happened.

But Vladimir had caused the biggest blackout of all week,

and it didn't look like

there was any fire at all. But Yandex did say that it completely

suspended operations there, so I can't tell you if Yandex

turned it off themselves or if a drone is what turned it off.

The third one was interesting, Kaluga, because it had nothing at all.

There was no fire and no drop in Georgia's tech data.

And on top of that, the only ones that are saying that it was hit is Yandex

and the

Ukrainian company that makes the drones, and both of them have reasons to say so.

I can only confirm that one of the three had a fire, and

that two of the

three says it had tech problems. But then I wanted to know who started the

silent

bot story. On October 10th, a pro-Ukrainian account on X called

Tatarigami, I believe. They joked that it would be such a tragedy if

Russia's bot traffic dried up right before the midterms. What?

And then what do you know? The next morning,

that same account announced that the

Makabots had gone awfully quiet. I mean, it gave no numbers at all, no

information beyond that, but oh boy, did that set off the entirety of

X. And you know what they say, you can always trust a conclusion

that comes before

the evidence