A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #339 - Marseille: sugar-coating megabits Why data centers in Marseille? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In 1966, the port of Marseille became autonomous. It was in the same 
year that the Saint Louis sugar company, based in the 15th 
arrondissement until 2015, decided to build a gigantic sugar silo within 
the port to store brown sugar from the French Overseas Territories. This 
building, 80 meters long and 45 meters wide, with its pointed roof, has 
been part of the port's decor since that time. It does not go unnoticed 
along the A55, the urban highway which runs along the port. Abandoned 
for several years, the GPMM (Grand maritime port of Marseille) decided 
to destroy it to reuse the area of more than 10,000m². Following a call 
for tenders launched in 2022, a project led by the company Digital 
Realty won the market with a data center construction project by 2026. 
This company is the world leader in data storage and is already the 
owner 3 other data centers in Marseille. This new data center will then 
be the 4th within the large autonomous port, and the 5th in Marseille. 
It will also be the largest of all in terms of surface area. This new 
construction is an opportunity for us to understand a little the 
usefulness of these giant over-secure buildings, and to also see 
everything that results from them.

Even if the press locally follows the evolution of this industrial 
sector in the city, many Marseille residents do not know that currently 
17 submarine cables linking 53 countries and 4.5 billion people are 
attached to the Marseille digital node. These cables, including 2Africa, 
the longest submarine cable in the world at 45,000 km, connecting 33 
countries in Europe, Africa (via the Strait of Gibraltar) and the Middle 
East and Asia (via the Suez Canal), Most of them arrive on Prado beach, 
south of Marseille, and are then connected by land to data centers at 
the port of Fos-Marseille.
Furthermore, Marseille, due to its geographical location, is connected 
to other European terrestrial Internet hubs. Marseille is notably the 
arrival point in France for the Chinese cable which connects the city to 
Singapore via Malta, the east coast of Africa and Pakistan.
Marseille would become the 5th global IT data hub in 2026, thanks to the 
construction of this 5th mega data center.

To put it simply, when behind your computer or smartphone screen you 
watch the latest OM football match in streaming, you exchange photos via 
WhatsApp or even when you listen to the Égrégore program produced by our 
comrade from the OCL of Reims, you consume computer data (DATA) 
physically stored somewhere in the world. If viewing an Égrégore radio 
show does not represent a large number of megabytes used, dematerialized 
finance, intelligence or the very large-scale use of "clouds" by 
companies consume much more. To do this, it is necessary to build giant 
computer data storage centers. There is always a need for more, as the 
volume of data continues to increase every year. In short, these are 
sort of huge memory cards where everything that happens on the internet 
is stored, temporarily or permanently. Everything is interconnected, so 
no data center without an underwater cable, and in fact no teleworking 
either! This IT data industry is a growing sector and a strategic sector 
for states and industry. This extremely rapid development raises 
multiple questions, including from a purely environmental point of view 
where this industry is a real ecological aberration... but not economic! 
Indeed, just as your small office computer requires cooling that 
consumes quite a lot of energy, these data centers must also be cooled. 
They consume both a crazy amount of energy and a lot of fresh water. Not 
to mention the impact of their constructions and their lifespan which is 
not yet really known. For water consumption, the industry is located in 
the port of Marseille, because the Caravelle stream circulates 
underground, diverted during the construction of the port, and whose 
temperature remains constantly around 15°C. Ideal for cooling, to the 
point that the industry prides itself on being "green" because it uses a 
"useless" stream. If we focus on electricity consumption, in the case of 
Marseille, Digital Realty has an overestimated contract with RTE in 
order to ensure potential overconsumption. Micro-power outages are 
unthinkable.

Error is not possible for this type of structure, so the company 
protects itself, because if the data center is down, its customers, 
mainly GAFAM and States, see their data exchanges significantly slowed 
down! In this era of everything being dematerialized, this is unthinkable.
Note also, to situate a little what this industry represents in terms of 
consumption, according to Bernard Genet, former trade unionist and port 
employee, member of the History and Contemporary Memory of the Port of 
Marseille association and environmental activist, electricity 
consumption national power for the use of computer data (including 
personal mobile phone charging) represents approximately 10% of national 
electricity production.

Apart from a few remarks from local EELV elected officials who were 
concerned about the electricity consumption that we have just mentioned, 
the opposition is practically nil. Let us note in passing that EELV has 
always been a party in favor of dematerialization and digital 
technology, such as for example the elimination of bus tickets with 
digital passes (and therefore data) in the 2010s (the example of Lille 
is quite explicit, see the book Green Hell by Tomjo). They are therefore 
in a rather bad position when David Cormant supports with a few local 
elected officials an official position in order to "control" the growth 
of this industry.
As for the activist collectives present in the city, this subject is 
rarely discussed either. This is explained by the fact that this 
industry is very discreet and its communication, however limited, is 
extremely controlled. Furthermore, today's environmental activist is 
often very connected and ultimately knows how to make the link between 
the cloud of his organization and his Zoom meeting better than the 
criticism of capital and that of the digital industry...

Note, however, some unclaimed actions (which seems logical given the 
colossal sum at stake) against computer installations. Not against data 
centers per se, but against cables. Data centers are structures that are 
far too monitored and protected to be able to do anything. The cables 
are easily accessible to those who know how to recognize them, because 
they often run in parallel with urban pipes. Sabotage in October 2022 
took place on a "segment of the fiber backbone which carries the Western 
Internet from northern Europe to Marseille[which]was cut at 
Aix-en-Provence. According to the first elements of the investigation, 
the criminals were enough to lift the cast iron cover of a telecom 
chamber dug under the road and cut through the sheath in which the 
cables filled with fibers pass.» In April of the same year, similar 
actions took place around Paris. These symbolic actions did not hinder 
the smooth running of the Internet... but symbolically they had been 
very effective because the entire press had relayed this action...
Finally, further from home, but not so much on the scale of IT 
interconnection, we learned through the press these last week that the 
Houthis (Yemen) have cut a data cable! All the more reason to secure 
Marseille's strategic facilities extremely strongly, so that no one can 
attack these infrastructures which have become necessary for, among 
others, all of the world's banks.

The transformation of the city of Marseille since 1995 with the 
Euro-Mediterranean project, then Euro-Mediterranean 2 in 2007, aimed at 
razing the working-class neighborhoods in the north along the port into 
business districts is progressing slowly. The urban renewal of this 
sector is obviously taking place with its share of violent evictions, 
expropriations, destruction of wasteland, etc. A new district of 
skyscrapers, "modern" buildings to provide offices and "quality" housing 
replaces the factories, the small dilapidated workers' houses and the 
poor but lively alleys. The parallel progression of this urban 
aberration of the data and digital industry seems logical in a vision of 
capitalist growth and transformation of the port's industrial 
activities. That this steamroller of digital and all dematerialized 
finds the city of Marseille like El Dorado is a real snub to the popular 
and working classes who in Marseille, more than elsewhere, suffer more 
and more from digital precariousness...

Arthur

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4142
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