Follow the rationale:
1. Nation states ultimately control three key infrastructure pieces required to run data centers (a) land (protected by sovereign armed forces) (b) internet / internet infra (c) electricity. If crypto ever became a legitimate threat, nation states could simply seize any one of or all these three and basically negate any use of crypto.
2. So, if you have data centers that no longer rely on power derived from a nation state, land controller by a nation state or connectivity provided by the nation state's cabling infra, then you can always access your currency and assets.
Fiscal rules are sort of man made.
Microsoft did something similar with their submarine data center pilots. This gets more press because AI.
Microsoft was talking about submarine data centers powered by tidal forces in the early 2000s.
There have been talks of data centers on Sealand-like nation states.
Geothermal ...
Exotic data center builds will always be hyped. Always be within the realm of feasibility when cost is no object, but probably outside of practicality or need.
Next it'll be fusion-powered data centers.
What did the royal navy do? There is no mention of the UK using force against sealand in either the Wikipedia page or this BBC article about sealand. (Though obviously the royal navy could retake sealand if they wanted)
https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/commonwealth-fusion-system...
If there's one large orbital datacenter, then sure, ASAT is a threat to it. But if it's a dispersed swarm like the Starlink system?
Good luck making a dent in that. You'd run out of ASAT long before Musk runs out of Starlink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater
Whats less well known is as the Ionsphere heats up the upper atmosphere, it bulges out into space like a tyre sidewall bulge. This has the effect of putting an atmosphere in the path of LEO satellite, which then causes the LEO satellite to fall to earth because they are not designed to travel through an atmosphere.
Joule heating is the most important one which can alter the thermospheric dynamics quite significantly.[1]
[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...
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The power of nation states is rooted in control of land and safety, as well as resources, which is an extension of the control of land. But once mining asteroids became economically viable, the connection between land and resources disappeared. Once space habitation in space and secretly developed weapon systems from space became viable, the connection between safety, habitation and land disappeared.
This allowed corporations and new organizations to rise to power large enough to challenge nation states. Those in power did feared to lose their power, which caused the great war which gave rise to the grey mass and destroyed earth.
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It's a very cool back story, which gives rise to a rogue nanite swarm (the gray mass), which forces an evacuation of earth within days. The only way this was even possible was by uploading human minds onto storage and planting them in robots later on. Naturally, most humans are then forced to work for these corporations. Other humans are still biological and they don't like robots, to say the least.
If a country doesn't like what is happening they can shoot it down, and with no humans onboard or nations claiming jurisdiction there really isn't much to stop them or to answer for.
All proposed space computing has an incredibly short orbital lifespan (less than 5y).
Every single space launch capable rocket provider in the world is financially, regulatorily, and militarily joined at the hip to a single government. No launches are taking place without that government’s say-so.
Also, space infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable to attack by nation-states as many others in this thread have pointed out.
EDIT: Removed unnecessary snark and fixed a mistaken double negative (s/dependent/independent) in the first sentence.
Spy satellites are individual craft. Proposals tossed about suggest significant constellates to give sufficient coverage to the land.
Suggestions involving square kilometers of solar power are not exactly things that would be easy to hide.
https://youtu.be/hKw6cRKcqzY (from YCombinator)
> Data centers in space. The problem is that data centers take up a ton of space and they need a huge amount of energy. Enter StarCloud. This is the beginning of a future where most new data centers are being built in space. They're starting small, but the goal is to build massive orbital data centers that will make computing more efficient and less of a burden on the limited resources down here on Earth.
These aren't small things. You can't hide it.
> And so we're building with a vision to build extremely large full 40 megawatt data centers. It's about 100 tons. It's what you can fit in one full Starship halo bay.
Otherwise? Go wild. The space doesn't lack for space.
And with all the LEO megaconstellations? GEO isn't as vital as it once was.
It would take zero anti-satellite weapons to take down Starlink. Just point a good old fashioned gun at the SpaceX engineer who can issue maneuvering commands to the satellites.
Starlink can even bounce data P2P, from one client terminal to another.
And how does decentralized ground infrastructure save you from a centralized executive?
The US Government further publishes tracking on pretty much every single thing in orbit of the earth larger than a few centimeters, to help satellite operators avoid space debris. They do obfuscate the current orbit of their own spy satellites (only publishing their initial orbit), but other countries and even private citizens around the world keep obsessive tabs on these things (e.g. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/). This sort of thing is easily within the reach of even a medium sized nation state that was interested in the investment: just need a couple of big ole radars and you can do it just like the US does. So if you do try and hide the resources of a nation-state can easily counter.
The solution to oppressive government is not technological, it's political. Prevent countries from going bad, retrieve the ones that have gone bad, it works out a lot better for everyone.
Uncle Sam could bring Starlink down, probably. For anyone else, that would pretty much require WW3.
Executives don't matter as much as you think they do. No credible executive is going to cave to random death threats, and carrying them out would cause new executives.
Now, would SpaceX eventually become a shell of its former self without Musk calling the shots? Maybe. But if the shell you're worrying about is Starlink orbital shell, and the time you're worrying about is today and not in ten years? Killing Musk doesn't help you much.