A drone attack caused a fire at a data centre belonging to Russian technology giant Yandex, the company told AFP Thursday, in the first strike of its kind on Russia.

Moscow (AFP) – A drone attack caused a fire at a data centre belonging to Russian technology giant Yandex, the company told AFP Thursday, in the first strike of its kind on Russia.

Images posted on social media showed thick, black smoke pouring from the roof of the building, which the company said was in the central Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow.

It is more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. But Russia and Ukraine have intensified long-range strikes on each other in recent months, with recent Russian attacks targeting Ukrainian data centres and logistics warehouses.

The former head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation said Kyiv was responsible for the night-time hit on the Yandex centre, writing on Telegram: “Two can play at this game”.

Yandex is Russia’s largest technology company.

Often dubbed “Russia’s Google”, the firm runs the country’s most popular search engine, as well as a food-ordering and taxi application used by tens of millions of people across the Russian-speaking world.

“A drone attack caused a fire at the Yandex data centre in Sasovo, affecting part of its infrastructure,” a Yandex spokesperson told AFP, without specifying the origin of the drone.

“There are no casualties, and emergency services are on site dealing with the aftermath. The data centre has stopped operating entirely, and some Yandex services may be unavailable to users,” the spokesperson added.

In another statement on Thursday evening, the company’s press office said Yandex was “still assessing the extent of the damage to our infrastructure”.

“At this stage, we cannot confirm whether the equipment at our Sasovo data center can be restored,” it added.

…

    • abcdqfr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      14 days ago

      Jfc people. The AI hysteria has gone too far. Data centers were around for a lot longer than chatgpt. How do you think the internet works? Why is every single DC now Satan himself?

        • abcdqfr@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          13 days ago

          And what do you suppose was implied? Any damage to Russia benefits the world? You know… Alright that makes more sense.

      • boonhet@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        This wasn’t an AI data center. Yandex itself is cancer though, it’s trying hard to be the next Google.

  • StateMachine@lemmy.zipEnglish
    21·
    12 days ago

    This is interesting to me from a consequence perspective. I think hitting datacenters is going to be the next big thing. I just posted the following in another thread:

    Louisiana’s new META datacenter is estimated to cost $140-$250 billion dollars once fully deployed (~$100B for the AI accelerators alone) [1]. Imagine being able to destroy $140B-$250B with a missile strike! There would be ripples through the whole world economy.

    [1] Sample price info source where cost can be extrapolated: https://epoch.ai/data/ai-data-centers/directory/meta-hyperion Scaling its $61.8 billion projection from 1.63 GW to the full 5 GW produces approximately $189 billion.