octaane parent
The only benefit as I perceive it re: orbital data center hardware is regulatory avoidance. Think...DDOS machines that can't be shut off; or financial hosting services for unsavory individuals. However, it's very expensive by all metrics (including those talked about in the article), and frankly, these satellites are sitting ducks for the hunter killer satellites the various space powers have, if they actually wanted to do something about these hypothtical data centers and the problems they would cause.
I don't see how this is really much different from just setting up servers in some underregulated banana republic; to do anything, you still need a connection to the public internet, and somewhat regulated nations like the EU or US can just block/prosecute at that interface.