Skip to main content

AmazonAtlas

On October 11, 2018, WikiLeaks published a "Highly Confidential" internal document from the cloud computing provider Amazon. The document from late 2015 lists the addresses and some operational details of over one hundred data centers spread across fifteen cities in nine countries. To accompany this document, WikiLeaks also created a map showing where Amazon's data centers are located.

Amazon, which is the largest cloud provider, is notoriously secretive about the precise locations of its data centers. While a few are publicly tied to Amazon, this is the exception rather than the norm. More often, Amazon operates out of data centers owned by other companies with little indication that Amazon itself is based there too or runs its own data centers under less-identifiable subsidiaries such as VaData, Inc. In some cases, Amazon uses pseudonyms to obscure its presence. For example, at its IAD77 data center, the document states that “Amazon is known as ‘Vandalay Industries’ on badges and all correspondence with building manager”.

Amazon is the leading cloud provider for the United States intelligence community. In 2013, Amazon entered into a $600 million contract with the CIA to build a cloud for use by intelligence agencies working with information classified as Top Secret. Then, in 2017, Amazon announced the AWS Secret Region, which allows storage of data classified up to the Secret level by a broader range of agencies and companies. Amazon also operates a special GovCloud region for US Government agencies hosting unclassified information.

Currently, Amazon is one of the leading contenders for an up to $10 billion contract to build a private cloud for the Department of Defense. Amazon is one of the only companies with the certifications required to host classified data in the cloud. The Defense Department is looking for a single provider and other companies, including Oracle and IBM, have complained that the requirements unfairly favor Amazon.

While one of the benefits of the cloud is the potential to increase reliability through geographic distribution of computing resources, cloud infrastructure is remarkably centralised in terms of legal control. Just a few companies and their subsidiaries run the majority of cloud computing infrastructure around the world. Of these, Amazon is the largest by far, with recent market research showing that Amazon accounts for 34% of the cloud infrastructure services market.

Until now, this cloud infrastructure controlled by Amazon was largely hidden, with only the general geographic regions of the data centers publicised. While Amazon’s cloud is comprised of physical locations, indications of the existence of these places are primarily buried in government records or made visible only when cloud infrastructure fails due to natural disasters or other problems in the physical world.

In the process of dispelling the mystery around the locations of Amazon’s data centers, WikiLeaks also turned this document into a puzzle game, the Quest of Random Clues. The goal of this game was to encourage people to research these data centers in a fun and intriguing way, while highlighting related issues such as contracts with the intelligence community, Amazon’s complex corporate structures, and the physicality of the cloud.

Source, links, further info:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

F-35s & AI Chips: How MBS Outplayed Washington & Beijing

GVS Deep Dive  Saudi Arabia just secured two of the most powerful assets in modern geopolitics: the U.S. F-35 stealth fighter and tens of thousands of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips. Washington hoped this would pull Riyadh firmly back into the American orbit. But the outcome is something neither side fully expected: Mohammad bin Salman outplayed both Washington and Beijing — and used the great-power rivalry to his advantage.
Post a Comment
Read more

Capitalism & Genocide - Yanis Varoufakis Speech at the Gaza Tribunal, 23rd October 2025, Istanbul

Yanis Varoufakis   On 23rd October, Yanis Varoufakis testified in front of the Jury of Conscience in the context of the Gaza Tribunal. His speech focused on the economic forces underpinning the genocide of the Palestinian people. In particular, he spoke on the manner in which capitalist dynamics have historically fuelled the white settler colonial project and, more recently, how the accumulation of a new form of capital - which he calls cloud capital - has accelerated, deepened and amplified the economic forces powering and propelling the machinery of genocide. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Trump RUINED: Israel First Lies & Economic Freefall Just ENDED MAGA

Danny Haiphong   Tucker Carlson isn't the only journalist breaking with Trump. In this video, Patrick Henningsen goes scorched earth on Trump's massive betrayal of what he promised his "MAGA" base and blows the lid off how his massive lies serve as a cover up for a much bigger structural problem in America's 'Israel First' political system, what Tucker and major voices in elite MAGA won't tell you.  
Post a Comment
Read more

Varoufakis: IT technologies will overthrow Capitalism

globinfo freexchange The former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, ended his recent speech on the Future of Capitalism, at the New School, New York, with some interesting remarks. As he said: The world we live in, is increasingly rudderless, in a constant slow burning recession, while at the very same time, the increasing concentration in the IT sector is creating the new technologies that will do that which the Left has failed to do: overthrow Capitalism. It is really very simple. The moment machines pass the Turing test properly, and you pick up the phone and you do not know whether the person you are talking to is a human being or a machine ˙ the moment we are going to have 3D printers operating as public utilities - you can send any blueprint to it and it can print from one pin to a motorcycle, or to a car - the moment that this happens, we have not just a process of Schumpeterian creative destruction, but we have a process where economies of sc...
2 comments
Read more

Racing Extinction

suggested by failedevolution.blogspot 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Scientists predict that humanity’s footprint on the planet may cause the loss of 50% of all species by the end of the century. They believe we have entered the sixth major extinction in Earth’s history, following the fifth great extinction which took out the dinosaurs. Our era is called the Anthropocene, or “Age of Man,” because evidence shows that humanity has sparked a cataclysmic change of the world’s natural environment and animal life. Yet, we are the only ones who can stop the change we have created. The Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), the group behind the Academy Award-winning film The Cove, is back with a new groundbreaking documentary. Joined by new innovators, this highly charged, impassioned collective of activists brings a voice to the thousands of species teetering on the very edge of life. The director has crafted an ambitious mission to clearly and artfu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mossad ‘in contact from very beginning’ with killers of Italian PM, reporter reveals

A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.   by Kit Klarenberg and Wyatt Reed   Part 7 - Mossad continues Italian ops amid Gaza genocide   Today, there is little trace of any pro-Arab tendencies in mainstream Italian politics. According to Salerno, the US and Israel no longer have any need to “destabilize Italy” as the country is economically “weak.” Rome’s government now is for all intents and purposes “a continuation, even an extension, of the old fascist regime,” he says, adding, “there are people in the government that have statues of Mussolini in their houses.” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made clear she harbors little sympathy for the Palestinians, and little intention of recognizing a Palestinian state – even after it was revealed in November 2024 the Mossad ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Greece, Palestine & Zionism: FPTV Reports from Athens

Free Palestine TV   Laith Marouf & Rabih Ghannam travel to Athens, Greece, and take a walking tour with local activists Evan Katsounis and Maria Kosmidi, to discover the rich history of anti-Zionist and anti-Fascist actions in the city, as well as the current Zionist incursion into the property sector and the counter actions directed at the presence of these War Criminals on the streets of the city. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Maduro's opening to China

“ Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday said he hopes Venezuela will use bilateral financing mechanisms and channel more funds to the areas of energy, mining, agriculture and industry while meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.” “ Financing mechanisms between the two countries total more than 50 billion U.S. dollars, according to Venezuelan experts. Financing mechanisms, including the China-Venezuela Fund, have provided financial support for some 256 projects. China and Venezuela upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during Xi's visit to Venezuela in 2014, opening a new chapter in bilateral ties.” “ During their meeting, Xi called on the two sides to push bilateral ties to a higher-level. China supports Venezuela's efforts in restructuring its economy and establishing a manufacturing economic model, he said. Xi suggested the two countries push forward cooperation in the fields of oil exploration, infrastru...
Post a Comment
Read more

Neoliberal establishment will attempt to take control of the evangelical electoral army using its most powerful asset for such an operation: Joe Biden

globinfo freexchange Here is another strong indication about the theory we support, according to which Trump, Brexit and other far-right governments in power, are primarily the product of a merciless civil war of the big capital. Politico 's article subtitle tells you almost everything you need to know: The president’s supporters worry Biden can grab a larger slice of a critical voting bloc — when Trump can least afford departures from his base. Let's take a look at some interesting parts [most important highlighted]: It was June 10, 2008. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had gathered with dozens of evangelical leaders — many of them fixtures of the religious right — at the urging of campaign aides. If he could offer genuine glimpses of his own abiding faith, they insisted he could chisel away at the conservative Christian voting bloc. The strategy worked. Obama’s campaign stops at churches, sermon-like speeches and hi...
Post a Comment
Read more

South American Pink Tide nations should unite to face US imperialism

by system failure   In one thing Donald Trump and his liberal rivals are united: to keep the US imperialist project alive. No matter how much angry they are with him, the liberal clowns (and their corporate media) fully align behind the orange clown under the roof of the US imperialist circus.  After supporting ridiculously that Venezuela is a key drug cartel hub to justify a possible invasion, the orange clown suddenly remembered that Colombia "is making cocaine". For decades, the Colombian cartel under right-wing US-puppet governments, collaborated with CIA in drug trafficking. Yet, now, "coincidentally" under a Leftist government who actually tries to deal with the problem of drug trafficking, Trump discovered the Colombian cocaine.  Of course, even a ten-year old kid knows today that the US aggression against Latin America countries, has nothing to do with drugs, or defending Democracy and human rights. It has to do with the resources and the fact that Russia a...
Post a Comment
Read more