Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.
SWISS ALPS — The data center lies in a former military bunker beneath a mountain in the middle of the Swiss Alps.
This is where pharmaceutical companies save their recipes for patented medicines, where banks save the personal data of their customers and where NGOs save the data of their benefactors. The locals, too, recognize the value of the safe. Both the upper and lower house of Switzerland's parliament have their servers hidden here.
The data center, known as the Swiss Fort Knox, is considered to be the world's safest place to store data.
"We are the last resort. If something goes wrong here, it is highly likely that all the data will be gone forever," says Christoph Oschwald, who co-founded the company Mount 10 that created the Swiss Fort Knox.
Since 1994, Oschwald and business partner Hanspeter Baumann converted the former headquarters of the Swiss Air Force into a top-notch data center by installing emergency diesel engines, a ventilation system, a filter and an air-pressure system to prevent the entry of any poisonous gases. Water from an underground lake keeps the center's cooling system at 8 degrees Celsius. All the data is encrypted and the digital key to decrypt them remains with clients.
"Should all ties be severed we are still able to function autonomously for several weeks," says Oschwald.
In case all the security measures fail, an underground network of high-speed cables links the center to a second server that holds a backup of the data in a mountain 10 kilometers away.
Data centers are the latest battleground in the war for information.
Ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations, it appears that any means to an end are sanctioned in the digital sphere. Snowden revealed that National Security Agency spies in the U.S. had identified themselves as information technology staff at private companies to gain access to servers.
Such a deception would be difficult to carry out at the Swiss Fort Knox. An intruder may get past the front door camouflaged as rock but, beyond that, it's a complicated system of tunnels that only people with necessary clearance can access. Oschwald, who was a Swiss paratrooper, ensures that security checks are water-tight. We are only allowed to reveal that these checks start with a biometric facial recognition scan, watched over by a security guard, the head of the company and a camera. On the other end of the camera, someone, somewhere, in Switzerland, pushes the buttons to open steel doors that weigh 3.5 tons and lead into the innermost sanctum of the data center.
But not everyone is convinced that data centers like the Swiss Fort Knox are unbreachable.
Zurich-based lawyer Martin Steiger, who specializes in digital privacy, is always amused when he hears of data shelters that promise the highest level of security. "Data is always vulnerable, no matter where it is stored," he says. Telling customers that they will get the highest level of security possible is a marketing strategy, says Steiger.
Oschwald knows that his fortress is not impregnable. There are cables connected to his servers that allow for data to be sent to and from the outside world. And his firewalls have to be taken down for maintenance every once in a while. "But there are a lot of dangers that we will not be subjected to here. Just think of solar storms." These storms cut electricity in Sweden in 2003 for several hours resulting in damaged servers. Indeed, several flights to the U.S. had to be rerouted in 2012 after solar storms wreaked havoc on servers. These incidents demonstrate how vulnerable our digital world is and the growing need to store data safely.
The Swiss Association of Telecommunications estimates that the space for data centers will grow 10% every year. The amount of data generated in the world doubles with each passing year. About 300,000 million pictures are uploaded everyday on Facebook alone. Data generated by people has already entered the "zettabyte" sphere, a level that ordinary people are unable to even comprehend. All this data needs to be stored in a physical hard drive and that's where Switzerland comes in.
Only Ireland has more data centers per capita than Switzerland, a country that has positioned itself well on the international data protection market.
[rebelmouse-image 27090377 alt="""" original_size="800×533" expand=1]
Data servers inside Swiss Fort Knox — Photo: Mount10-wiki
Many companies believe Switzerland is a great location for data servers, preferring it to countries like Germany despite the fact that the latter is home to a quarter of Europe's server centers. Mike Jank, co-founder and chairman of the encrypted communications company Silent Circle, points out that his customers do not trust a product if it comes from the European Union, Russia or Asia. And certainly not one from the U.S. Customers fear that intelligence services in those parts have unhindered access to supposedly secure information.
But such beliefs are misplaced, says Steiger.
"Switzerland only operates at an average level when it comes to data security as our conditions here are very close to that of the EU," he says.
Switzerland is attractive to customers because of its image. "If a company is located in Switzerland it still emanates trustworthiness," Steiger says.
That image also draws the trust of the wrong kind of people. Oschwald is aware of this.
"We most certainly do not want any dubious clients or criminals as customers at our data shelter," he says. Although the company does not know the contents of the data it stores, the access to external IP addresses gives them an idea about their clientele. "We have never had to cancel a client's contract to this day," he says.
After we leave the Swiss Fort Knox, Oschwald points to the camouflaged front door of the center. "This is not just meant to be used by large companies," he says.
"I am not just interested in the business side of things in this case. I am also a citizen. I do not understand a state which takes liberties and delves ever deeper into our privacy. I do not understand most of the general population who do nothing to protect their private data either. What would you say if you received letters at home that had already been opened and read by authorities? Would you like that? No? There you go."
SWISS ALPS — The data center lies in a former military bunker beneath a mountain in the middle of the Swiss Alps.
This is where pharmaceutical companies save their recipes for patented medicines, where banks save the personal data of their customers and where NGOs save the data of their benefactors. The locals, too, recognize the value of the safe. Both the upper and lower house of Switzerland's parliament have their servers hidden here.
The data center, known as the Swiss Fort Knox, is considered to be the world's safest place to store data.
"We are the last resort. If something goes wrong here, it is highly likely that all the data will be gone forever," says Christoph Oschwald, who co-founded the company Mount 10 that created the Swiss Fort Knox.
Since 1994, Oschwald and business partner Hanspeter Baumann converted the former headquarters of the Swiss Air Force into a top-notch data center by installing emergency diesel engines, a ventilation system, a filter and an air-pressure system to prevent the entry of any poisonous gases. Water from an underground lake keeps the center's cooling system at 8 degrees Celsius. All the data is encrypted and the digital key to decrypt them remains with clients.
"Should all ties be severed we are still able to function autonomously for several weeks," says Oschwald.
In case all the security measures fail, an underground network of high-speed cables links the center to a second server that holds a backup of the data in a mountain 10 kilometers away.
Data centers are the latest battleground in the war for information.
Ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations, it appears that any means to an end are sanctioned in the digital sphere. Snowden revealed that National Security Agency spies in the U.S. had identified themselves as information technology staff at private companies to gain access to servers.
Such a deception would be difficult to carry out at the Swiss Fort Knox. An intruder may get past the front door camouflaged as rock but, beyond that, it's a complicated system of tunnels that only people with necessary clearance can access. Oschwald, who was a Swiss paratrooper, ensures that security checks are water-tight. We are only allowed to reveal that these checks start with a biometric facial recognition scan, watched over by a security guard, the head of the company and a camera. On the other end of the camera, someone, somewhere, in Switzerland, pushes the buttons to open steel doors that weigh 3.5 tons and lead into the innermost sanctum of the data center.
But not everyone is convinced that data centers like the Swiss Fort Knox are unbreachable.
Zurich-based lawyer Martin Steiger, who specializes in digital privacy, is always amused when he hears of data shelters that promise the highest level of security. "Data is always vulnerable, no matter where it is stored," he says. Telling customers that they will get the highest level of security possible is a marketing strategy, says Steiger.
Oschwald knows that his fortress is not impregnable. There are cables connected to his servers that allow for data to be sent to and from the outside world. And his firewalls have to be taken down for maintenance every once in a while. "But there are a lot of dangers that we will not be subjected to here. Just think of solar storms." These storms cut electricity in Sweden in 2003 for several hours resulting in damaged servers. Indeed, several flights to the U.S. had to be rerouted in 2012 after solar storms wreaked havoc on servers. These incidents demonstrate how vulnerable our digital world is and the growing need to store data safely.
The Swiss Association of Telecommunications estimates that the space for data centers will grow 10% every year. The amount of data generated in the world doubles with each passing year. About 300,000 million pictures are uploaded everyday on Facebook alone. Data generated by people has already entered the "zettabyte" sphere, a level that ordinary people are unable to even comprehend. All this data needs to be stored in a physical hard drive and that's where Switzerland comes in.
Only Ireland has more data centers per capita than Switzerland, a country that has positioned itself well on the international data protection market.
[rebelmouse-image 27090377 alt="""" original_size="800×533" expand=1]
Data servers inside Swiss Fort Knox — Photo: Mount10-wiki
Many companies believe Switzerland is a great location for data servers, preferring it to countries like Germany despite the fact that the latter is home to a quarter of Europe's server centers. Mike Jank, co-founder and chairman of the encrypted communications company Silent Circle, points out that his customers do not trust a product if it comes from the European Union, Russia or Asia. And certainly not one from the U.S. Customers fear that intelligence services in those parts have unhindered access to supposedly secure information.
But such beliefs are misplaced, says Steiger.
"Switzerland only operates at an average level when it comes to data security as our conditions here are very close to that of the EU," he says.
Switzerland is attractive to customers because of its image. "If a company is located in Switzerland it still emanates trustworthiness," Steiger says.
That image also draws the trust of the wrong kind of people. Oschwald is aware of this.
"We most certainly do not want any dubious clients or criminals as customers at our data shelter," he says. Although the company does not know the contents of the data it stores, the access to external IP addresses gives them an idea about their clientele. "We have never had to cancel a client's contract to this day," he says.
After we leave the Swiss Fort Knox, Oschwald points to the camouflaged front door of the center. "This is not just meant to be used by large companies," he says.
"I am not just interested in the business side of things in this case. I am also a citizen. I do not understand a state which takes liberties and delves ever deeper into our privacy. I do not understand most of the general population who do nothing to protect their private data either. What would you say if you received letters at home that had already been opened and read by authorities? Would you like that? No? There you go."
Too much has been put in to the state-sponsored truth that minimal spread of the virus is the at-all-cost objective. Xi Jinping may eventually have no choice but to renounce the harsh measures, but at this week's Communist Party Congress, the Chinese President was giving no ground.
COVID testing in Guiyang, China
This article was updated on Oct. 17 at 10:45 a.m. EST
The tragic bus accident in Guiyang last month — in which 27 people being sent to quarantine were killed — was one of the worst examples of collateral damage since the COVID-19 pandemic began in China nearly three years ago. While the crash can ultimately be traced back to bad government policy, the local authorities did not register it as a Zero COVID related casualty. It was, for them, a simple traffic accident.
The officials in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou, of course, had no alternative. Drawing a link between the deadly crash and the strict policy of Zero COVID, touted by President Xi Jinping, would have revealed the absurdity of the government's choices.
At a speech Sunday to open this week's historic Communist Party Congress, Xi made clear he had no immediate plans to loosen the Zero-Covid strategy. He called the tough health measures, a "people's war to stop the spread of the virus."
Objectively speaking, Zero COVID may not necessarily be a bad policy in itself, as it is based on good intentions: to protect the health and lives of the public. During the first phase of the pandemic, and the onslaught of the Delta virus, Zero COVID did serve to protect the population, bringing the spread under control to the greatest extent possible, and allowing the economy to recover quickly.
In mainland China, there have been just over 5,000 deaths from COVID-19, most of them were in Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic, a low proportion compared to the country's total population. This can be credited to the “Zero Covid” policy, even if it has also caused a number of humanitarian disasters, such as the lockdown of Wuhan. Ultimately, we can conclude that Zero COVID had remained successful until the emergence of the Omicron variant.
Its destructive side has emerged the longer it's been held in place. Since Omicron, Zero COVID has kept China's infection rate low, but the collateral damage and social cost has long since surpassed its benefits.
The crude and brutal nature of the policy, and the harm to people's individual interests and even their own life can be seen in the strict lockdowns, large-scale COVID testing and social isolation. As witnessed in Shanghai, Xi’ An and other cities, Zero COVID has proven to ultimately have the inverse effect of the stated purpose of protecting people's lives and health.
What concerns the public most now is how Zero COVID will change in the future
Gauthier Delecroix
The examples of the harm of Zero COVID are too many to list. So the question now is, with the population extremely resentful and local officials struggling to maintain this policy, why is Xi sticking with Zero COVID? Hasn't he always taught officials to measure their governance by whether or not the people are satisfied? It shouldn't be based on sticking to a promise. Why is this criterion invalid for Zero COVID?
The answer lies in two factors: first, Xi's one-man leadership system prevents his personal will from being effectively corrected; second, his knowledge of Zero COVID's direct effectiveness in preventing the spread has kept him fixated on that goal.
During his visit to Wuhan in June, Xi declared: "If you see the overall picture, our measures to prevent the pandemic are the most economical and the most effective … With the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the important grassroots base of local communities, we have the ability and strength to implement the Zero COVID policy until we achieve final victory."
The official party line and propaganda states that "the practice of the pandemic control in the past three years has proven that Zero COVID is scientific and in line with China's national context. This path is right and effective, and is the best option for China."
This is likely the extent of Xi's understanding of Zero COVID, which is based on the fact that China was able to contain the spread and maintain economic growth during the first phase of the pandemic. For Xi, since the approach proved to be correct back then, it is all the more important to stick to Zero COVID in the face of the Omicron virus, rather than changing or abolishing it.
In addition, vaccination rates have not yet formed a sufficient barrier against the pandemic in a vast country like China with differences in local healthcare conditions. It was thought that if China followed the West's example of "mass vaccination," it would cause a spike in infections, resulting in a run on medical resources and ultimately causing unbearable losses to people's lives and property, with unthinkable consequences."
What the official media say is what officials think. The Chinese government, and probably Xi himself, don't trust the efficacy of the Chinese vaccine. But for reasons of so-called "vaccine nationalism," he is unwilling to approve the purchase of American and Western mRNA vaccines. Thus the policy of harsh lockdowns and mass testing had to be continued.
Xi Jinping (and everyone) masked up in Hong Kong
Li Gang/Xinhua via ZUMA
What concerns the public most now is how Zero COVID will change in the future, and whether China will remain closed after three years of control. Some worry that China's Zero COVID could become a permanent policy.
Two days before the beginning of this week's Party gathering in Beijing, which is virtually guaranteed to hand Xi a third term, the capital was witness to a rare protest against Xi and his COVID policies, reported the BBC on Friday.
Images showed two protest banners on a bridge in northwest Beijing, before the action was quickly shut down by police.
One banner read: "No Covid test, we want to eat. No restrictions, we want freedom. No lies, we want dignity. No Cultural Revolution, we want reform. No leaders, we want votes. By not being slaves, we can be citizens."
Still, even in the face of growing conflict, there will be an end to the pandemic at some point, and with it a way out of Zero COVID. But when?
The scenario most likely to end the harsh lockdowns are more signs that the economy simply can longer sustain it. Now considered a consensus, China's economy is living through its worst period in more than a decade. If we don't see significant signs of growth, despite various stimulus measures, then Zero COVID might be abandoned sooner rather than later, though nothing would happen before the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on October 16.
There is also a scenario of the pandemic lingering, the economy adjusting and the controls of Zero COVID never quite going away.
Too much has been put in to the state-sponsored truth that minimal spread of the virus is the at-all-cost objective. Xi Jinping may eventually have no choice but to renounce the harsh measures, but at this week's Communist Party Congress, the Chinese President was giving no ground.
What are Vladimir Putin's long-term goals in Ukraine? An overlooked treaty from the mid-1990s reveal that his ambitions go far beyond Ukraine to building a Russian Empire 2.0.
A total of 43 of the reported Iranian-made drones fell across the country.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform via ZUMA Press Wire
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.