NSA and CSS Computer Resources

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

I didn't comment before on Michael Wilson's revelations about the
Maryland Procurement Office (and how it revealed NSA purchases). But I
will now.

He writes:

> Michael Wilson
> Managing Director, The Nemesis Group
> 
> [I hope that the record of purchases made through the Maryland Procurement group
> are making their way from systems such as Mead Data and into private systems for
> analysis; warning, access of such data is expensive.]

Actually, there are much cheaper way to get even more accurate data.
Gunter Ahrendt has been the compiler of a list of supercomputer sites,
a list which he publishes weekly in comp.sys.super. (I haven't seen it
recently, so it may be dormant for the summer.)

Here's an excerpt for the NSA and CSS:

2) 83.73 - (02-JUN-1993) [NSA]
        National Security Agency,California,US
        1) 3 * Cray C916-512  83.73

3) 69.79 - (22-JUL-1993) [CSS]
        National Computing Security Center,Central Security
Service,National
        Security Agency Headquarters,Fort George G Meade,Maryland,US,
        postmaster@ftmeade-eas.army.mil
        1)     TMC CM-5/512     ~35.04  {linearly scaled from a 64CPU
unit}
        2) 5 * Cray Y-MP/8-256   34.75

etc.

I don't discount the possibility that NSA, CSS, NRO, etc. try to hide
some of their purchases--certainly in budgets, if not physically. But
in general they have little to gain by hiding the fact that they have,
for example, 8 Connection Machines. After all, Thinking Machines knows
(purchase, service), and word gets out.

Ahrendt has had good accuracy.

In any case, the number of supercomputers the NSA and its related
affiliate agencies have is not too worrisome to me.

--Tim May



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