0:00

From NASA sending astronauts to the moon

0:02

to billionaires launching themselves into space,

0:04

there's something about the cosmos that inspires

0:06

people to attempt the impossible. None of this

0:09

would be possible if it weren't for a group of engineers

0:11

who risked it all for the sake of blowing

0:13

stuff up. From LAS Studios,

0:16

listen to LA Made, Blood, Sweat, and Rockets,

0:18

available now wherever you get your podcasts.

0:29

Let me just tell the dog

0:31

to be quiet. Hey,

0:34

be quiet now, okay? Sorry,

0:37

my dogs only speak Finnish. My

0:41

mother is Finnish and my father is English.

0:44

So I've always had a connection

0:46

to Finland for my whole life. And

0:49

when I saw that there was an opportunity to

0:51

get a job in a data center in a country

0:53

that I love, in a culture that I wanted to be

0:55

part of, I just jumped at it.

0:58

So it was a bit

1:00

of a dream come true, really, to be working

1:02

in an industry I love and in a country that I

1:05

have a great relationship with.

1:10

This is Where the Internet Lives, a

1:12

show about the unseen world of data centers. I'm

1:14

Stephanie Wong, and I'm your guide to the people

1:17

and places that make up the internet. This

1:19

season, we're exploring how data centers change

1:21

the world around them in surprising and transformative

1:24

ways.

1:32

Miko Green is an operations manager

1:34

at Google's data center in Haamana, Finland.

1:37

He was born in England and spent much of his life in the

1:39

UK. But during the summer months, when his

1:41

family would vacation in Finland, his mother

1:43

kept the culture in the house, speaking to Miko

1:46

and his siblings in her native language.

1:47

My mom spoke to us in

1:49

Finnish sometimes when we were at home. It

1:52

was a great secret language because

1:54

very, well, very, very few people

1:57

in the UK could actually understand what we're saying.

1:59

It was a brilliant language for telling a child

2:02

off in a public situation. I

2:05

must admit, I wasn't always the most well-behaved

2:07

child, so I think it was actually quite a useful

2:09

skill to be able to understand a

2:11

different language. And it meant not everybody had

2:14

to be part of that reckoning

2:16

when it came.

2:21

In 2012, when Miko applied to

2:23

work at Google's new data center in Hamina,

2:25

he was excited about the prospect of moving back

2:27

to the country where his mother's family still lives.

2:30

And Hamina was the quintessential Finnish town.

2:33

Small, industrial, water everywhere.

2:36

On a map, it's an unremarkable dot 90 miles

2:38

east of Helsinki on Finland's southeastern

2:41

coast. But it has a fascinating

2:43

history. Hamina is

2:44

an interesting city. There's

2:46

not many cities that are built on the old

2:49

town part of Hamina, it's built

2:51

on a circular street plan. So

2:54

if you have a drone and you hover up

2:56

a few 500 meters, you'd

2:58

actually see the streets radiating

3:00

off of a central town. The town hall

3:03

building is in the middle and then circular

3:05

streets radiating off around that.

3:08

It was actually built as a military

3:11

town. So one of the reasons for that

3:13

design because it actually had

3:14

ramparts and defensive

3:18

construction around the town because it

3:20

was actually a town that was fought over

3:23

quite often between different parties

3:25

with the Swedish and the Russians before

3:27

Finland gained independence even.

3:29

About 20,000 people live in Hamina.

3:32

In 2019, they installed the largest Finnish flag

3:34

in all of the Nordics. It's almost the size

3:37

of a basketball court. And on a windy

3:39

day, you can see it from anywhere in town.

3:41

It's not a buzzing metropolis, but

3:43

it's a I think the Hamina use their own tagline.

3:45

It's a which is a world

3:48

class small city.

3:52

Historically, this tiny corner of

3:54

Finland was known for papermaking. It's

3:56

been a cornerstone of the economy since the late 1800s.

3:59

The country has long been a top producer of the world's

4:02

paper. By the early 2000s, the

4:04

forest industry, which includes wood products,

4:06

pulp and paper, employed 70,000 people. In 1965,

4:11

when the pulp and paper industry was booming, Stora

4:13

Enzo, the largest paper producer in all

4:15

of Europe, built the Summa Paper Mill in

4:18

town.

4:18

Yeah, the paper mill was, parts of it

4:20

were built from like the 1950s onwards,

4:23

and some was built in the 70s and 80s. So

4:25

we got

4:26

a varying sort of styles of architecture

4:29

there. It's originally

4:32

designed by Alvaro, which is

4:34

one of the most famous Finnish architects.

4:36

For four decades, the paper mill was

4:38

one of the largest employers in the area. And

4:41

when the mill was really humming, everyone knew

4:43

it.

4:43

There's a certain smell you get from a paper mill

4:45

when it's operational. It's the smell, I

4:47

think, of when they're processing

4:50

the cellulose from the wood and

4:52

stuff like that. The

4:54

locals say in Kodka and Hamina before, that was

4:56

the smell of money. It was, you

5:00

could tell that people were making money

5:02

because you could tell from the smell of

5:04

the operation.

5:09

The paper industry has always played a huge role here,

5:11

and it was a generational

5:14

industry.

5:14

So you talk to a lot of people here, their

5:17

grandfathers were in the paper industry, then their

5:19

fathers, and then maybe even they worked in

5:21

the industry themselves. So we tended

5:23

to see whole families working in

5:25

that industry.

5:27

But in the mid 2000s, the paper industry

5:29

started a downward slide. The

5:31

digital economy was taking off and paper

5:34

exports were falling. Stora Enzo

5:36

started closing mills all across Finland.

5:39

And in 2008, it closed the Hamina Mill. The

5:42

mill had barely been shuttered for a year when Google

5:44

bought the building to turn it into a data center.

5:47

For a town whose identity was built around the paper

5:49

industry, there was some skepticism.

5:51

When I arrived in 2012, there was a lot

5:54

of questions because we'd only been operating

5:56

the data center for about a year. And

5:58

it was a lot of questions about...

6:00

Who are you? Why are you here? How

6:02

long are you going to be here? When's the paper

6:04

mill going to reopen and when are you strange

6:06

people going to leave?

6:08

To many locals, Hamina might have seemed

6:10

like a strange place to put a hyperscale data

6:12

center. But it turns out that a paper

6:14

community had all the right elements for running

6:16

a warehouse full of computers.

6:18

Well, there's the element of you need a site, so

6:20

you need enough physical space to be able

6:23

to build. We had a large site with

6:26

hundreds of acres of available land.

6:29

There was

6:30

cooling water right next to the sea,

6:32

so we could use the seawater for cooling. That's

6:34

an incredibly important positive

6:36

part of why we chose where we were going

6:39

to site the site.

6:40

The mill had been built right on the water, overlooking

6:43

the Gulf of Finland. That proximity

6:45

to water meant seawater could be used to cool

6:47

the steam generator that ran the old mill.

6:49

And it meant Google could use the same infrastructure

6:52

to pump Baltic seawater through the data center

6:54

to cool the server floor. But that

6:56

wasn't all.

6:57

They had large incoming power supplies,

7:00

because again, a paper industry

7:02

is a very power heavy industry. Data

7:04

centers require a lot of power to be able to run

7:06

the servers in there. And when you

7:08

look at the people, a lot of people consider

7:10

data centers to be very technical when you

7:13

have to have people in there who are running around

7:15

fixing the IT side of things. Absolutely.

7:18

But that's not the majority of the people.

7:20

The vast majority of the people in the data center

7:23

are actually there to do other things, like make sure

7:25

the power is available, make sure there's cooling available,

7:28

make sure that the data center is secure,

7:31

make sure that people are fed, make sure

7:33

that all of the other services around the data center

7:36

keep on running. So there's

7:38

a lot of people already in the local area who

7:41

understood a lot of those things, because

7:43

they already understood power, they understood cooling,

7:45

they understood a lot of those areas that a

7:47

data center needs. So there

7:50

was a readily available, talented,

7:52

skilled workforce in the local area.

7:59

How come?

9:59

consumption at the site. Finally,

10:02

the heat from the servers is used to warm

10:04

the campus, and Google is also exploring

10:06

how to expand a district heating system for the

10:08

broader community.

10:09

And now we're at the next frontier

10:12

here now as well. A lot of people are looking

10:14

at how, okay, we produce

10:16

the IT side of things, but we also produce heat.

10:19

So how can we use that heat to its best advantage?

10:21

How can we use that heat for the advantage

10:23

of the people in the local area

10:26

and the people around where the data

10:28

centers are cited? The

10:29

transformation of the paper mill into

10:31

a hyperscale data center is a microcosm

10:34

of Finland's broader economic shift toward tech,

10:37

which is now a top industry in the country. And

10:39

the data centers focus on sustainability

10:41

is an example of how tech companies can help

10:44

Finland reach its goal of becoming carbon

10:46

neutral by 2035. Data centers

10:47

are going to have to be sustainable.

10:50

Obviously, we've made a lot of commitments

10:52

as a company around sustainability, around

10:55

the energy that we use

10:58

and making sure that that's carbon

11:00

neutral. But also for the long term,

11:03

we want to be a good neighbor to

11:05

the communities that we live in. So obviously,

11:08

the more we can do around sustainability

11:10

and reuse of heat, etc., that

11:13

makes us a much better neighbor

11:15

to our local community.

11:22

After 10 years of operation, the initial

11:24

suspicion locals felt about Google's data

11:26

center moving into Hamina has turned

11:28

to enthusiasm.

11:30

Now, everybody is always asking,

11:32

so when are you going to build the next building? When

11:34

are you going to expand again? They're

11:37

very proud of having Google in their town

11:39

and having us as one of

11:41

the major employers now in the whole region.

11:44

As the economy shifts and diversifies,

11:47

what do you think the future of Hamina looks like?

11:50

If you'd have asked me 10 years ago when I was talking to

11:52

people, they didn't have a great

11:55

feeling of a great feeling about what

11:57

the future of Hamina was going to be. They'd come.

11:59

only been a few years since the

12:02

paper millers shut down. We'd been here

12:04

for a little while but nobody could

12:06

understand the scale that we would

12:09

get to in the future. There

12:11

wasn't a great positive outlook necessarily.

12:15

That's changed a lot. I think now

12:18

people are much more positive. They can see

12:20

that there's a lot more opportunities and

12:23

there's a lot more positivity around the town.

12:25

We're also seeing

12:27

a decline in the number of people leaving the

12:29

area because in a lot of the areas,

12:32

especially a post-industrial type areas, you see

12:34

quite a lot of people leaving. They'll go towards the

12:37

major metropolitan areas and you'll see quite a

12:39

lot of people leaving. It's not got to the

12:41

stage yet when the area is necessarily growing

12:44

in numbers hugely but there are opportunities.

12:47

People don't have to leave now to be able to find

12:49

a good decent place to work

12:51

and to be able to bring up their families. They

12:53

can still stay here. It's a huge transformation

12:56

and it's quite amazing to think about.

13:02

Mikko Green is a data center operations

13:05

manager at Google's data center in Hamina, Finland.

13:07

If you want to learn more about building your career at

13:09

a data center or Google's investments

13:11

in communities like Hamina, click through the link

13:14

in the show notes. Where the Internet Lives

13:16

is produced by PostScript Media in collaboration

13:18

with Google. Our theme music was written by Echo

13:20

Finch. Additional music came from Epidemic

13:23

Sounds, Blue Dot Sessions, and Echo Finch.

13:25

You can subscribe to the show on Google Podcasts,

13:27

Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere

13:30

else you access your shows. And please give

13:32

us a rating if you

13:32

like the series. I'm Stephanie Wong. Thank

13:35

you for listening.

13:44

I've been wondering something lately. Why

13:46

does it seem like once you become a billionaire,

13:49

when you're one of those disruptor CEO

13:52

Mavericks, the only thing left

13:54

to do to test your genius

13:56

is to build yourself a rocket

13:58

ship. And

14:05

I speak for all of us here at SpaceX

14:07

when I say we could not be more excited

14:10

to finally be sending humans to the International

14:12

Space Station. There's Elon Musk.

14:14

I cannot emphasize this enough. We

14:16

must make life sustainably multiplanetary.

14:19

There's Jeff Bezos, who stepped down as

14:21

CEO of Amazon to focus on Blue

14:23

Origin, his rocket company, and

14:26

sent William Shatner to the edge of space,

14:28

not to mention

14:29

Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic.

14:33

So what is it with these guys? Why

14:35

the middle-aged pivot to rocketry?

14:38

I think there's something about outer space, the

14:40

cosmos, that inspires people

14:42

to attempt the impossible. But

14:45

here's what most people don't know. None

14:48

of this would have happened. No billionaires

14:50

launching themselves into the wild blue

14:53

yonder. No moon landing

14:55

either, if it weren't for a group of

14:57

men in Pasadena, California,

15:00

back in the 1930s.

15:02

They risked it all for the sake

15:05

of blowing shit up and changing

15:07

the world. They

15:13

would come to be known as the

15:15

Suicide Squad. Allow

15:18

me to introduce them. Chen

15:21

Shuxian, the mathematician.

15:23

And he would come to the classroom. He would just, those

15:26

students obviously ask questions,

15:29

and Chen would say, I would suggest you

15:31

to drop off my class. That's

15:33

it, simple. Frank Molina,

15:36

the mastermind. I would say

15:38

it was kind of his dream to

15:41

establish unmanned exploration

15:44

of space.

15:45

And lastly, Jack Parsons,

15:47

the one about whom I have reservations.

15:51

Parsons was perhaps the most, I

15:53

would say, unusual one. Jack

15:55

always wanted to set off

15:58

rockets and explosions.

15:59

there in the field and making things happen. That's

16:03

the crew. They were the perfect

16:05

the storm.

16:15

In the 1930s, if you said

16:17

you wanted to work on rockets, colleagues

16:20

would ostracize you, financiers

16:22

would laugh in your face, and everyone

16:24

would assume you were going to accidentally

16:27

blow yourself up. Which was

16:29

a fair assumption. Frequent explosions

16:31

at Caltech are actually how this team

16:34

earned its name, the Suicide Squad.

16:37

But far from being a joke, the Squad's

16:40

achievements led to the founding

16:42

of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

16:45

Southern California,

16:45

which has landed rovers

16:48

on Mars. So

16:50

let me say this. If you think Branson

16:53

and Musk have earned their reputation

16:55

as eccentric wildcards, just

16:58

wait till you hear the Suicide

17:01

Squad story. There will

17:03

be satanic ceremonies

17:05

and some practices known as sex

17:08

magic.

17:08

Which is using sexual intercourse

17:11

and orgasm in rituals

17:14

to harness energy towards

17:16

a specific goal.

17:17

There will also be historical

17:19

figures who get screwed over and

17:22

unfairly forgotten. Women have

17:24

been a part of every major milestone

17:26

and every mundane task in the history

17:28

of aerospace, and their

17:30

stories are not often told or remembered.

17:33

There will be a corrosive and widespread

17:35

communist

17:36

scare. The then director

17:38

of JPL, Louis Dunn, walked

17:40

into an FBI office and said,

17:43

I think this is spiring at

17:45

JPL.

17:46

And ultimately, there will

17:48

be a suspicious death. There

17:50

were actually two explosions, one right after another,

17:52

because it shook the city with shockwaves.

17:56

Test cell phone switch gone. On, light on.

17:59

Pressing command to internal. One,

18:02

two, three, four, five, eight, eight, seven...

18:05

I'm M.G. Lorde. Discover the mad

18:08

origins of aerospace. Three,

18:10

two, three, four, five, eight, zero... Blood,

18:14

Sweat and Rockets, the first season

18:16

of L.A. Made, a new podcast

18:19

coming soon from L.A.'s studios.