Ammunition manufacturer can’t produce additional artillery shells because TikTok’s data center uses all electricity
WTF?! TikTok often makes headlines for claims that its user data is being shared with the Chinese government, but the company also appears to be inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) influencing one of Europe’s biggest ammunition makers.
Nammo, an ammunition maker jointly owned by the Norwegian government and the Finnish state defense company, cannot keep up with the growing demand for its artillery shells because the local data center, whose main customer is TikTok, is using all the electricity in the region. , preventing the planned expansion of Nammo’s plant.
“We are concerned because we see that our future growth will be hampered by the storage of cat videos,” said Morten Brandtzag, CEO of Nammo. Financial Times.
Brandtzæg said demand for the company’s artillery shells has surged 15 times higher than usual as a result of the war in Ukraine. He said the country wants to increase the daily number of rounds it uses from 6,000 to 65,000 when it fights Russian forces.
Elvia, the local power company, said the network has no spare capacity as it operates on a first-come, first-served basis and promised it to the data center. Brandtzag believes that governments should prioritize electricity for certain industries. “The key industry needs to have access to energy,” he said. “I don’t think it’s an isolated incident, I think it’s a trend for the future.”
The fact that China has never publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and that leader Xi Jinping recently met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to cement relations between the two countries, raises questions about whether this was unintentional on TikTok’s part.
“I do not rule out that this is not a coincidence that this activity is close to a defense company,” Brandtzeg said. “I can’t rule it out.”
There are plans to build more TikTok data centers in Norway as the country offers cheap electricity and a cold climate to reduce cooling costs. He plans to build what will be biggest Up to 150 MW data center campus in Norway by November 2023. The facility (above) will be powered entirely by renewable energy, primarily hydropower.
It’s been a difficult month for TikTok in the US. The White House has backed a Senate bill that would allow the country to ban TikTok, which the Biden administration has threatened to do unless ByteDance sells it to someone outside of China.
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