Fundamentally, when Elon Musk said that Iron Mountain was incredibly inefficient when storing records, he was correct.
But, as with all things related to Elon Musk, the truth is a bit more complicated.
Iron Mountain was formed as an underground Mushroom Farm back in the 1940's by Herman Knaust. "By 1950, the mushroom market had shifted, and Knaust was looking for alternative uses for his mine, which he had named 'Iron Mountain.' He saw a business opportunity, amidst widespread Cold War fears, in protecting corporate information from nuclear attack and other disasters. The company was originally founded in 1951 as Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation."
Since its formation, Iron Mountain was NEVER meant to be efficient. It was meant to be isolated and in the middle of nowhere, able to withstand a nuclear strike or a meteor impact, if you could even find it. (This was, of course, in a faraway time, before Google Maps.)
How do I know? I used to work at Iron Mountain. I took sensitive data from our branch in the Cleveland Suburbs to that underground mine in rural Pennsylvania. Unless you knew exactly where it was, it was impossible to find it. 'The Underground' is in the middle of winding roads and rolling hills, marked from the road with a single sign the size of a piece of paper.
Iron Mountain was meant to survive an extinction level event....
Again, there is no highway within a half an hour of Iron Mountain. Once you find the place, it only has one single lane in and out of its only entrance. The guard shack just outside the entrance is loaded with weapons, industrial grade weapons you'd only see in an action/adventure movie.
Once inside, there is a single one-lane loop for cars, the rest of the mine can only be accessed by golf cart and is reinforced by concrete barriers. My security clearance ended in the loop.
What's my point? Getting anything deep into that mine is a huge pain in the ass. When Elon Musk bitches that there's only one industrial elevator from the loop to the bowels of the mountain, he was correct. Again, and I cannot say this enough, the process was not designed for efficiency.
Many Iron Mountain executives can only speak in one language, and that's the language of stock prices. As soon Elon Musk spoke, the stocks tanked and executives panicked. (Red Arrow.)
How did they level off?
Actually, that's one of the funniest stories ever.
CEO Bill Meaney hurried up and called a press conference and offered up AN EVEN MORE INEFFICIENT PROCESS to the government called imaging.
Now when Elon Musk says EFFICIENCY, he means 'the cloud.' The problem with the cloud is that, right now, 'the cloud' isn't really that safe.
Can 'the cloud' be hacked? Yeah, probably.
Can 'the cloud' withstand an extinction level event? No, probably not.
Say a meteor hits the city where your servers are located. Chances are, your information is wiped out. Now if you're a Fortune 500 company, you're probably willing to take that chance because the alternative is too expensive.
But, in theory, the U.S. Government shouldn't take that risk, right?
Editor's Note: There is no right or wrong answer, it has to do with risk aversion.
Now Imaging is the process of taking that sheet of paper, scanning it to a computer, and then saving the file. Meaney's plan of imaging all of the government's billions of paper documents, then shredding them, would be an even more inefficient system than the inefficient system we have now. Switching to imaging would actually cost the American Taxpayer more money.
Did the DOGE cancel America's Iron Mountain contracts and move governmental backup systems into the cloud?
Nope. There are local, state, and federal regulations that dictate that government business has to have a physical backup. Law after law, across all levels of government, would have to be struck down or repealed.
I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that it would be a long, time-consuming process that wouldn't work across the board.
Again, I'm just an idiot that runs an unpopular blog. If I write that we should move all government systems into the cloud, I would be countered immediately by industry experts that would say "you know how complicated that would be?"
Elon Musk waves a chainsaw in the air and he's a genius. He has no real-world plan to make the transition happen. He briefly embarrassed Iron Mountain, got his photo op, then ran into an impenetrable stack of laws.
Why haven't you read more stories about the intricacies of data storage? Because it's one of the most boring topics ever invented. Many data storage experts have died by their own hand or fallen into deep comas related to tedium and living a banal existence.
If anyone at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is bored, they should definitely investigate Bill Meaney. He dumped a shit-ton of stock right before Elon Musk blasted Iron Mountain from the Oval Office.
Editor's Note II: Union Busting made a lot of people at Iron Mountain rich.
Great article. Thanks for the info about Iron Mountain, it was quite interesting. Agree about Elon...