The Problem With Google Analytics And Ashburn, Virginia

70% of the internet passes through one city in the United States.

Randomly, your Google Analytics will report massive (criminal?) traffic from this location.

What is so special about Ashburn, Virginia?

The answer is related to the 43 Empty folders at Mar-A-Largo...

Yesterday, I was hit with the Ashburn bug.

It occurs when Google misses a bot from one of the data centers in Ashburn, VA.

The results is massive traffic to your site in less than 2 minutes.

If you were not aware, "Data Center Alley" in Ashburn, VA is home to 12 million square feet of commissioned data center space that consumes over 800 megawatts of Power.

Why Ashburn?

1. The typical cost per megawatt is 28% lower than the national average.

2. Washington D.C. is nearby, and VA does not pay a 6% sales tax on servers or their equipment.

Should be called the "selling your data tax"

3. Are you ready for this...

Virginia Beach is home to the location in which data is transferred to Europe...

Underwater.

In total, there are 475 cables spanned underwater - mostly connecting in Virginia.

95% of the internet travels through these cables everyday.

Financial transactions.

Bank information.

Military orders...

Control The Cables and You Gain Significant Power

If you are going to strategically place a data center in the United States the most optimal location is in fact right next to Virginia Beach.

All those Zoom calls, work from homers, business transactions; all of it - travels underwater in fiber optic cables owned by companies like Microsoft called Marea.

But not everyone is playing nice with these cables.

Here is a headline from Business Insider

"Russian intelligence agents reportedly went to Ireland to inspect undersea cables, and it's reigniting fears they could cut them and take entire countries offline"

This threat is not a coincidence with everything going on in the news lately.

"Based on evolving intelligence, Russia might be planning a cyber attack against us,” Biden said at a press conference on March 21. "The magnitude of Russia's cyber capacity is fairly consequential and it's coming."- France24.com

Maybe Google Analytics was a blip for our website.

A missed bot crawling our site.

Or maybe it's a new set of eyes that has never been there before.

Who thought it was a good idea to have 95% of the internet travel though one cable anyway?

TLDR;
1. Ashburn VA is home to 70% of the world's internet.
2. 80% of the power used to run our internet is in Ashburn.
3. It's located next to underwater cables
4. 95% of the data travels through these cables

He who owns the cables, runs the world.

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