No. I got rid of the car about a year later. It didn't bother me because at the time, I thought it was just a snitch, like the any other cell phone. Didn't occur to me they could shut off my car but I feel stupid I didn't think of that. Too trusting.

The OnStar system in my previous vehicle still reported to OnStar (or someone) even though it did not HAVE OnStar installed or activated. I was out west where the nearest cell tower was over 60 miles away and was using an SDR and traced it to the trunk on the drivers side. I was looking for some SCADA signals in the 800-950 Mhz range and said "What the actual hell is THAT!?" when I saw it was always near, and always fairly strong. I assume it was beaconing for a cell tower since it was a repeated signlal with about the same waveform.

"Value Priced" installed alarms do that. I installed and maintained alarms in the 70's. I used two types of systems, for low security, a resistor at the bitter end of the zone. That way a open or short would set off the zone. The other was a oscillating R/C or C/L circuit that was tuned to a unique frequency for that alarm on that zone. Lately, the zones (wired or wireless) use TLS.
As to reporting, most were metallic pair from TelCo (kinda expensive) with line security (variable oscillating), or used dial up every few minutes. A special "OverWatch" mode for dial up was available for an extra charge that stayed connected but that was designed by the company and not something off the shelf. These days, it's done with Internet via cable/phone or wireless. A drop in comms == "Trouble" which is treated as an alarm condition.
Another precaution was a code to repeat in case of alarm. Said code said one style, everything is OK. Said in another style it ment the subscriber was being held hostage. Much fun calling for a SWAT response and very, very expensive when the subscriber got it wrong.

Can we roll back the Chicken War tariffs that have been in place since 1964? (Yes, it's vehicle related.)
How about eliminating the "foreign oil" exemption to windfall profits tax? Especially US oil that is exported then re-imported at a higher price to evade the tax.
While we're at it, delete the Jones Act (Which is why the East Coast imports oil rather than pipe it in), add in Right To Repair, Right To Own, One Touch Make Ready, Repeal of all cable and telephone monopolies, escheat back to the government leased radio spectra not 72% utilized for more than 3 months, revocation of all DRM for E-Books and printer supplies, term limits for SCotUS, Senate, and House, require congressional districts have about the same number of people with the minimum possible circumference as the only legal considerations (Because voters should pick their politicians, politicians should not be able to pick their voters.)

Yeah. Pipe dream I know. Too much power into the hands of the people, too many profits short circuited.

AS I recall, someone tried using chemical SNAP generators with lasers and Neural Networks in the 1980's or 90's.
The system tried to shoot down the moon. Again. Happened before too, with a straight radar system (the Soviets tried? Might have been the US, I forget).

Pretty much. The lady that did the spreadsheet was shocked that it worked much better as a web application. She asked for PHP and SQL training. I helped her get the first basics, then since she wanted to change professions pointed her to professional training. I was concerned I'd show her bad habits, not being expert in it.

This is a company IT initiative. IT can damn well unlock it. Had a customer with lots of Word and Excel users refusing to switch. The owner told them as of X date, MS tools would be removed, and Libre Office installed. They could train for the transition, or be fired for failing productivity metrics. Strangely, all were able to transition to Libre within the time frame. Their "huge spreadsheet" effort took me all of half a day to move to Postgres and PHP with data retention and history.

Due to a fundamental lack of understanding of what acting like a Christian is.

Yes, I know, since I was on the team for storage (Block, File, Object) at a large ISV with data centers around the world.

Again, yes, I'm aware of that. Typically, the data centers I was working with used multiple OC-192's. Telco class MAE routers are not cheap.

I think you meant egress. Which is common because Object Stores are non-atomic. If you want to change an object, your first step is to download what's there (if you didn't keep a local copy), change it, delete what you have in the store, then upload the changed dataset. Because it's non-atomic.
I did a quick squint at S3, looks like nine cents a gig egress up to 100 GiB, and then you go to a lower pricing tier. Ingress is also a change it looks like, for the API for sure, I didn't bother to identify transit as it's an object store.

Actually, the choice was made by a political appointee for policy reasons. Math had nothing to do with the outcome in that case.

Which is why SWIFT has API tiers, to limit the price of runaway programs with bugs, or unexpected traffic. So does S3, and you even have an exposed API to check your call statistics. Not sure with the S3 system has for a refresh cycle, what I worked with were contemporaneous. If I recall correctly, someone sells an API sifter for Amazon billing that will alert you to monitored issues. I'm a firm believer that "no news means you're ignorant, which is never good news."

I am comparing using an internal system versus a service.

The selection of a service over using internal mechanisms is when the service is either too lightly utilized to justify facilities, staffing, and capex,

or

outsourcing those functions is desirable from a operations stand point.

From that standpoint of facilities, staffing, and capex, it is unquestionable that the government fulfilling these will be less expensive in the long run than using a service. That leaves policy as a deciding factor going against it. The policy consideration wasn't articulated.

Amazon persuaded NASA to use S3 rather than the object store NASA invented: Open Stack SWIFT.

Instead of being able to rely on their own work, with minimal cost, now NASA is locked into a multi-year monopoly and will be paying for it for decades. I see this as just another instance of corporations sucking the government tit forever. Maybe this time, it won't be. And Lucy could let Charlie Brown finally kick that football too.

Amazon is in it for the money of course. The question is does it make sense for the country to rope in Amazon when the uses of the product will likely be long term, and no small amounts classified? Those are questions of policy that can be legitimately argued either way, but the final analysis is that government/private sector endeavors almost always seem to sour and fail. Examples are collecting student loans, where the loans are paid to the private contractor, but the principal never makes it back into Government hands. Another are prisons, where treatment of prisoners and their needs significantly decline once government is removed from direct accountability. A third is collecting fees form legal proceedings, where the debtor is invariably put into deeper and deeper holes with fees and fines, and returned to prison. Last, child support payments in states where it's contracted out to private intreats, and the debtor is arrested when the payment processor "forgets" to process the payment sent. (Turns out vindictive spouses are involved.) Predation by the private sector is easy, almost inevitable.

If there are successful partnerships, please chime in and point them out.

Thank you, I missed that in the article when my mind boggled at using a bore hole.

I didn't even get to build costs. In my foolish youth, I worked off shore oil rigs doing wireline. Shoving a nuclear reactor down a 3.5"-5" pipe 8,000 to 22,500 feet deep will prove to be an interesting engineering challenge, not to mention "Dancin' with Kelly". (The main rotating drilling platform that makes the pipe rotate and the drill head bite.) The technology to drift a hole more than a 20 meters in diameter vertically down half a mile or more is not anything I've read about. Is it even possible?

All engineering problems are to an extent. In the final analysis, in 47 years, I've found that it's mostly moving the problem from one in-box to another in-box. The problem is still there, but now it's not your in-box.

Taking your last point - time. Time is what you're seeing as a steady state. Will Microsoft still be interested in power in 20 years? Will they form a shell corporation to sign that contract, then bankrupt it once their needs are gone? So many business use this "one simple trick" to get subsidies or reduced rates, then almost inevitably leave the taxpayer with the sack to when it suits their profit model to exit their obligations.

Question: What do you use to power the air flow for that air cooling system, and how many watts would it draw to meet the same caloric (or BTU, if you prefer) cooling of using water versus air. It's a simple formula to work out the differing efficiencies of using which fluid, air or water, you'd prefer for non-forced draft cooling. It gets a bit more involved calculating the power needs for forced draft cooling. No matter what you do though, your cooling is going to consume a portion of your power output, reducing overall efficiency, and thus adding to the time to meet ROI. The reason engineers use PWR reactors is that it makes the business math work, and other methods to date do not.

Mercy snip
You left out several options:
1. Don't use WCR's. MHD or PBR are a thing too. (See final line)
2. Use Geothermal cooling. Not aware of anything outside of paper but as long as you have a sink cooler than your source, you're good. (hint: The rocks can only absorb so much heat before you've exceeded their ability to sink any more and thus overheat your installation.)
3. Dump waste heat into salt vats, rotate the salt vats to allow natural cooling. (Molten salt cooling).
4. Use micro reactors like Toshiba and Samsung have developed. Put the power plant where the power is needed.
But none of those are commercially feasible without forever government subsidies. Again, privatizing the profit, socializing the cost.

TMI 1 was finished April 19, 1974, on a Babcock and Wilcox PWR design. It's far past it's life expectancy. Indeed, it got another 20 years in 2009.
1 billion is just for starters.

Unit 2 was gutted and it's the same PWR design from B&W.

In general, I approve of nuclear power generation, but not this particular B&W PWR design, since it's proven to fail.

Add that these systems require huge amounts of cooling water, and that there are competing demands between people, agriculture, other industry, data centers, and power plants on that water. The water is bad enough, but providing power to more AI D.C.s will increase everyone's power bill. Which is, in essence, is exactly what the phrase "Privatizing the profit and socializing the cost" means.

I think the only "government loan" that didn't turn into a handout was for Chrysler, and that only happened because they were building tanks at the time. Certainly most of the Trump COVID loans were forgiven, especially those handed out to politicians (to be fair, of BOTH parties.) Remember how Solyndra controversy went bust and put egg on the faces of the democrats that backed that. And how the Cato institute suddenly stopped comment on it, and later, 45 issues a few pardons to folks that at first blush, don't seem to have ties to that, but a little digging....
Politics is fascinating when one studies the round about way sooner or later everyone winds up in everyone else's bed, but it's you and me that get screwed. I think we can agree that we need to yank all trading rights to politicians while in office, and for 5 years afterward. Might be a good thing too to stop trying to be the bank for some of these loans. A shame that, because there are more than a few that I feel are worth it, but it's the others that are duds that spoil it for everyone.

Why is the government, at any level, buying where non-indicted, presumed innocent people are traveling, for any reason at all, let alone without a warrant? The "Thrid party rule" of evidence is simply a power grab our founders would be horrified to see happen. It is quite clear they distrusted and despised all forms of government surveillance and believed only in the most restricted circumstance should it be allowed, and only then under the supervision of a judge. Having been given a worm's eye view of some of the less egregious things that pass for "national security", it's quite obvious it's mostly to harass the innocent. Most of the time, in my opinion, that someone is guilty of anything at all, whatever is a simple coincidence. Remember children, National Security Letters come with a built in gag order, you're not allowed to even discuss it with your own attorney.

Seriously, that we have become so reliant on 100% 24x7x365 connectivity is chilling.