Data centers are the new oil.

We’ve come a long way from the four nodes of ARPANet, which were managed by a government project and created in part with an eye to national security and American Department of Defense interests. 

Now, data centers are private affairs, and if you don’t have a Google lanyard and your biometrics aren’t in the Facebook system, you can’t get in. 

Just as social companies are black boxes for algorithms, their infrastructure is a black box for sovereign states, too. (Unless they’re peeking in through the backdoor.)