A Norwegian arms manufacturer said that a TikTok data center is eating all the electricity in the region, meaning that the company cannot keep up with the surging global demand for ammunition.
Experts are increasingly commenting on the massive demands of big tech companies, and how energy usage by their data centers is causing issues for other industries.
"We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos," Morten Brandtzæg, the CEO of Nammo, said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Brandtzæg said that the demand for artillery rounds was 15 times higher than normal — a trend driven by the war in Ukraine, which has featured heavy artillery use.
Ukraine, for instance, would like to increase its daily usage of rounds from 6,000 to 65,000, he said.
Insider couldn't immediately establish whether Nammo shells are being used in Ukraine — its customer base, as described in a 2021 annual report, is overwhelmingly EU and NATO states, which have been making mass donations to Ukraine since Russia invaded.
However, in the area of Norway where Nammo operates, its defense work gets no priority over any other users of electricity.
Power is provided on a first-come, first-served basis, according to Elvia, the energy provider in the Raufoss region of Norway — an area around 120km north of Oslo.
The energy company told the FT that it has no spare capacity for Nammo to hike its output as it has already been promised to TikTok. A spokesperson told the FT that if Nammo does order more capacity, it will "take time" before that can be achieved because the network needs to be "strengthened."