I seem to recall a certain former NSA affiliated person speaking on the conjecture of NSA Full Capture from fiber optic taps at a HOPE conference many many years ago. The statements alluded to automated custom robotic “drive shufflers” for even the tape and drive libraries already in use at that time, and heavily implied that in some cases exotic storage was being handled by Rube Goldberg style computer assisted robotically serviced storage libraries that would make even HAL jealous.

Robotic tape libraries are an old, commercial off-the-shelf technology.

I wouldn’t be surprised if NSA purchased equipment using a method akin to greymarketing where the supplier either

A) doesn’t know the true destination of the parts, including purchases through an agency other than NSA, or purchase by multiple “individuals”

B) NSA has arrangements to compensate manufacturers using black budget line items and gov projects line items where disclosure of the production or even something like funding of a stand-up of a factory is not clearly delineated or otherwise inaccurately designated in SEC and IRS filings. More so I’m pretty sure there is a named procedure/process and maybe even a working group or sub-unit, similarly bearing a unique cryptonym, enabling the large scale acquisition of goods while keeping the regular record publication flows ignorant.

China has proved there is a massive grey market for gpus.