I don't know how to make sense of this level of investment. I feel that I lack the proper conceptual framework to make sense of the purchasing power of half a trillion USD in this context.
Maybe your calibration isn't poor. Maybe they really are all wrong but there's a tendency here to these these people behind the scenes are all charlatans, fueling hype without equal substance hoping to make a quick buck before it all comes crashing down, but i don't think that's true at all. I think these people really genuinely believe they're going to get there. And if you genuinely think that, them this kind of investment isn't so crazy.
Are there computing and cryptography problems that the infrastructure could be (publicly or quietly) reallocated to address if the United States found itself in a conflict? Any cryptographers here have a thought on whether hundreds of thousands of GPUs turned on a single cryptographic key would yield any value?
'Well known' password notwithstanding, let's use the following as a password:
correct-horse-battery-staple
This password is 28 characters long, and whilst it could be stronger with uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters, it still shirtfronts a respectable ~1,397,958,111 decillion (1.39 × 10^42) combinations for an unsuspecting AI-turned-hashcat cluster to crack. Let's say this password was protected by SHA2-256 (assuming no cryptographic weaknesses exist (I haven't checked, purely for academic purposes)), and that at least 50% of hashes would need to be tested before 'success' flourishes (lets try to make things a bit exciting...).
I looked up a random benchmark for hashcat, and found an average of 20 gigahashs/second (GH/s) for a single RTX 4090.
If we throw 100 RTX 4090s at this hashed password, assuming a uniform 20 GH/s (combined firepower of 2,000 GH/s) and absolutely perfect running conditions, it would take at least eleven-nonillion-fifty octillion (1.105 x 10^31) years to crack. Earth will be long gone by the time that rolls around.
Turning up the heat (perhaps literally) by throwing 1,000,000 RTX 4090s at this hashed password, assuming the same conditions, doesn't help much (in terms of Earth's lifespan): two-octillion-two-hundred-ten septillion (2.21 x 10^27) years.
Using some recommended password specifications from NIST - 15 characters comprised of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters - lets try:
dXIl5p*Vn6Gt#BH
Despite the higher complexity, this password only just eeks out a paltry ~ 41 sextillion (4.11 × 10^22) possible combinations. Throwing 100 RTX 4090s at this password would, rather worryingly, only take around three hundred twenty-six billion seven hundred thirteen million two hundred seventeen thousand (326,713,217,000) years to have a 50% chance of success. My calculator didn't even turn my answer into a scientific number!
More alarming still, is when 1,000,000 RTX 4090s get sic'ed on the shorter hashed password: around thirty-two million six hundred seventy-one thousand (32,671,000) years to knock down half of this hashed password's strength.
I read a report that suggested Microsoft aimed to have 1.8 million GPUs by the end of 2024. We'll probably be safe for at least the next six months or so. All bets are off after that.
All I dream about is the tital wave of cheap high-performance GPUs flooding the market when the AI bubble bursts, so I can finally run Farcry at 25 frames per second for less than a grand.