A Norwegian arms manufacturer said that a TikTok data center is eating all the electricity in the region, meaning that the company cannot keep up with the surging global demand for ammunition.
Experts are increasingly commenting on the massive demands of big tech companies, and how energy usage by their data centers is causing issues for other industries.
“We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos,” Morten Brandtzæg, the CEO of Nammo, said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Brandtzæg said that the demand for artillery rounds was 15 times higher than normal — a trend driven by the war in Ukraine, which has featured heavy artillery use.
Ukraine, for instance, would like to increase its daily usage of rounds from 6,000 to 65,000, he said.
Brandtzæg said that he had considered whether it was a coincidence that Chinese-owned TikTok was impeding the expansion of an arms company.
“I will not rule out that it’s not by pure coincidence that this activity is close to a defence company,” he said. “I can’t rule it out.”
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