Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Military

Norway Company Can't Produce Ukraine Ammunition Because of TikTok (theguardian.com) 258

quonset writes: In what has to be one of the most inconceivable confluences ever, the Norwegian company Nammo says it is unable to expand its production of artillery shells to support Ukraine because of "cat videos" on TikTok. To placate European scrutiny, TikTok is opening two data centers in Europe to house European user data locally. One of those data centers is in the Hamar region of Norway. Because of this expansion, there is no excess capacity for the factory to ramp up production of artillery shells.

"The chief executive of Nammo, which is co-owned by the Norwegian government, said a planned expansion of its largest factory in central Norway hit a roadblock due to a lack of surplus energy, with the construction of TikTok's new data centre using up electricity in the local area," reports the Guardian. "Elvia, the local energy provider, confirmed to the Financial Times that the electricity network had no spare capacity after allocating it to the data center on a first-come, first-served basis. Additional capacity would take time to become available."
"We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos," Morten Brandtzaeg told the Financial Times.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Norway Company Can't Produce Ukraine Ammunition Because of TikTok

Comments Filter:
  • by MBC1977 ( 978793 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:11PM (#63407710) Journal
    Unplug TikTok, and produce the ammo. Nothing of use will be loss. Trust me on this...
    • That's the plan? (Score:2, Interesting)

      Perhaps the reason for the shortage of ammo is that they are already planning to "unplug" Tik Tok...
      • Better yet, make sure that Tic Tok users are notified that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the reason that the service is shut down in their region. It would probably help to mobilize support from a new and unexpected group of people! I can see the "Russian army advance halted by Internet prankster" headlines now!

    • by Daemonik ( 171801 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:59PM (#63407786) Homepage
      So how does the average GOP person process this one.. government interference in corporations is bad.. unless they're interfering in a business we (GOP) don't like then good... government picking losers and winners is bad.. Russia good.. Ukraine bad.. selling weapons to Ukraine to use against Russia very bad... TikTok bad because China.. TikTok uses wi-fi very bad.. Meta paid us to trash TikTok good.. Meta does same things or worse than China but their check cleared so ignore it...

      The mental flow chart has to be causing meltdowns.
    • Simple logistics.

      a) divert some existing production

      b) use it to shell the TikTok datacenter

      c) replace what you diverted with the newly increased shell production

    • The energy provider, Elvia, would lose credibility if it stops existing contracts on a whim. Who will trust them in the future? Sure there has to be a solution... this sounds more like an excuse.

    • by blahabl ( 7651114 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @04:46AM (#63408180)

      Unplug TikTok, and produce the ammo. Nothing of use will be loss. Trust me on this...

      Nothing of use? How about: public trust that contracts (like the one for electricity signed by TikTok) will be upheld by the state, regardless of political sympathies of parties involved, and not randomly cancelled oh just "because fuck you, that's why", like in a banana republic?

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        I really hate that you're right on this, because I share OP's view of TikTok. There really would be nothing of value lost if they went away, but an agreement is an agreement.
  • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:12PM (#63407712)

    And the Nobel peace prize goes to.... TikTik?

  • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:15PM (#63407718) Homepage

    In what has to be one of the most inconceivable confluences ever,

    Do they even know what that word means?

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:24PM (#63407726)

    get an judge to shutdown the data center now!

    • And on what legal base would:
      a) would anyone be able to make a cause in court?
      b) would a judge rule in favour for shutting it down?

      Just wondering about your logic how a "state of law" is working.

  • by Daemonik ( 171801 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:48PM (#63407768) Homepage
    Sounds like the artillery company should have either had an agreement in place to reserve power if they needed to expand or the country should have some military exemption to the "first come first served" utility distribution system in place ahead of time. But I'm sure such measures were voted down as unnecessary war mongering. Now they're just blaming Tik Tok when it could just as easily be a Google/Meta/EU company in the data center, probably for a play to subsidize an EU competitor later.
    • They are not blaming TikTok.
      They only mention that there is a new data center build, for Tiktok, and that there is not enough power left for themselves.

    • Sounds like the artillery company should have either had an agreement in place to reserve power if they needed to expand or the country should have some military exemption to the "first come first served" utility distribution system in place ahead of time.

      Except what you're talking about is a private company currently without any national security relevance. You don't give military exceptions to random companies. They are not supplying the local military, Norway isn't strategically suffering. There's no basis for this company specifically right now based in that country to get special consideration.

      As for planning, I don't think you quite understand the what-if scenario here. Munitions companies like this exist to arm a country to fend off an attack. They do

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @10:07PM (#63407802) Homepage Journal

    make TikTok and NATO compete for electricity.

  • National security requisition: unplug TikTok.

  • Here are some potential argumentative fallacies I see in the article: 1) False dilemma: The article presents a false choice between attracting data centres and ensuring energy access for others. The issue is more complex with room for compromise and balancing different interests. 2) Anecdotal evidence: The article relies on a single anecdote about Nammo's factory expansion being halted to argue that data centres are exacerbating energy issues. A single case study doesn't necessarily prove a broad trend, an
    • They're talking contractual issues here. The data center has a contract to use the power from Elvia on a first-come, first-supplied basis, but almost every contract has a "war clause" built in where war-time needs preempt contractual agreements.

      The only thing really left out of the summary is whether the government wants to invoke a "national security" or war clause to divert more energy to making needed ammunition and pay the contract fine.

      • but almost every contract has a "war clause" built in where war-time needs preempt contractual agreements.
        Just lol.
        No: there is no contract with a war clause.
        If war is an issue, the government can change/influence things. Most certainly there is no contract clause.

  • What is the power company's total output? Who else besides TikTok is utilizing it? How much power does the ammunition manufacture need? Without these facts, blaming TikTok is just leveraging Ukrainian suffering to try to kill a Chinese competitor.
  • Seriously. if this was a few years earlier, they would have said all the crypto miners are to blame, or the Teslas. There are always excuses.

  • Isn't it the EU laws that forced TikTok to build those data centers? I'm sure they would have been happy using Chinese electricity, but EU insisted they must use draw EU power.

    Full disclosure, I am not a fan of TikTok, but in this case, clearly something forced on them.
    • Isn't it the EU laws

      Irrelevant. Norway is not now, and never has been, a member of the EU.

      Yeah - that surprises a lot of non-Norwegians. They had a referendum about it in the late 1990s. Decided that the trade relationships were acceptable (they are members of the European Single Market), but they didn't want to lower their social standards to those of the average EU country.

      Norwegians like to travel across the North Sea to cheap, poverty-stricken, holiday destinations like Britain, but they certainly don

  • C'mon even peaceful Norway must have some way to overrule contracts in the name of national security.

  • This is the most ridiculous excuse I ever saw. So the energy provider is booked 100% and has no operational margin with a reserve in the case some incident happens? The ammo factory can increase production overnight, they only need energy, no factory space, no workers, no raw materials? The energy grid in Norway is not connected so when a provider can't supply enough, others can't step in? The energy grids in whole Europe are not connected so you can't import from other countries? What a lot of bull.

    • So the energy provider is booked 100% and has no operational margin with a reserve in the case some incident happens?
      It has reserves, but those would be gone if they where booked and supplied. (* facepalm *)

      The ammo factory can increase production overnight, they only need energy, no factory space, no workers, no raw materials?
      No. Did you read the summary? The bottleneck is energy, not working an extra #4 night shift.

      The energy grids in whole Europe are not connected so you can't import from other countri

      • Norway as a country can. But the local grid probably can't.

        This is exactly what is happening. To quote another article [forbes.com]:

        The local energy provider, Elvia, suggested that it would take a good amount of time—years—to strengthen the electrical transmission network

        So it seems the issue is more with the local grid, and having two geographically-close energy consumers which need a lot of electricity at the same time.

    • This is the most ridiculous excuse I ever saw. So the energy provider is booked 100% and has no operational margin with a reserve in the case some incident happens?

      Incidents don't increase energy consumption, they reduce it, as consumers become unable to consume.

      It's not unheard of for capacity to be fully booked. Here in Humboldt county, CA you can't even get a permit to build anything new because there's no power. They tried to get offshore wind in here like a decade ago and they stopped it in order to preserve their view. It's happening now, though, and I guarantee they will learn nothing from this experience. They could have built a freeway bypass decades ago too,

    • This is the most ridiculous excuse I ever saw. So the energy provider is booked 100% and has no operational margin with a reserve in the case some incident happens? The ammo factory can increase production overnight, they only need energy, no factory space, no workers, no raw materials? The energy grid in Norway is not connected so when a provider can't supply enough, others can't step in? The energy grids in whole Europe are not connected so you can't import from other countries? What a lot of bull.

      Most importantly, yeah, sure "Ukrainians won't get artillery shells if you don't do what we say". There's plenty of arms dealers in the world, artillery shells are not some sort of high-tech thing that only they can make. So make that "booohoo, I won't get the monies for making shells for Ukraine, someone else will pocket that". But that of course doesn't look nearly as well, does it?

  • These local data centers are such a fools errand. As if the Internet didn't exist and it wouldn't be trivial for the Chinese government to have connections or backdoors into that data and siphon whatever they want. Nobody is going to audit those systems or check them in any way for what is happening with that data. So it might as well sit in Beijing.

    • You know there once was a hoax kind of joke of an US president who had no clue about anything.

      So he called the internet the "data highway". On a highway you can count cars.

      In a data center - which is connected to the world via *cables* - you can count what amount of data goes in and out. Even if it is encrypted in a magical way that you do not know to where it goes: the data is there. It is just like a car on an data/internet highway.

      No idea why people are so stupid to not even come to the most basic "knowl

  • It had to be said.
  • Growth of an ammunition factory is challenged. How is it a bad news? Also it is not Ukraine ammunition, it is ammunition, it can and will go anywhere lol.
  • by computer_tot ( 5285731 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @06:52AM (#63408382)
    People have more access to communication and silly videos and less access to weapons to kill each other. This doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing.

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

Working...