{"id":244291,"date":"2025-10-22T19:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/244291\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T19:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:42:10","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-the-cloud-crash-an-outage-that-showed-who-really-runs-the-internet-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/244291\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on the cloud crash: an outage that showed who really runs the internet | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

An outage<\/a> at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted apps and websites around the world, affecting more than 2,000 companies and leaving millions of users unable to access services like Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo and even Amazon\u2019s own operations. Removing the tech from our tech-dependent existence led to workers being sent home and exams delayed<\/a>. The crash<\/a>, which lasted<\/a> 15 hours, underlined how deeply our digital lives depend on a small number of cloud providers \u2013 and how vulnerable<\/a> many everyday systems are to a single failure.<\/p>\n

If data is the new oil, then cloud computing is the pipeline, the refinery, the tanker fleet and, increasingly, the pump too. The big three \u2013 AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud \u2013 account<\/a> for 60% of global cloud computing. They own the networks and cables that move data across the world. Their platforms don\u2019t just turn data into useful insights \u2013 they do it with proprietary tools that make switching providers costly and complex. Finally, through Amazon\u2019s Alexa, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, they are also shaping how people interact with data and services.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that all the information processing has to happen in buildings full of servers connected to the internet via fibre-optic cables. Amazon\u2019s biggest and most critical cloud region, known as US-EAST-1, is located in northern Virginia and is home to 70% of the world\u2019s internet traffic<\/a>. Virginia\u2019s role in web traffic is comparable to the strait of Hormuz for oil tankers \u2013 a narrow choke point through which vital commerce flows. It is vulnerable not only to technical error but to cyber-attacks, geopolitical sabotage and terrorism<\/a>. This was the cluster\u2019s third major outage in five years<\/a>, each leading to an internet meltdown.<\/p>\n

In a paper<\/a> for University College London, Francesca Bria, Paul Timmers and Fausto Gernone warn that cloud computing is the power grid of the 21st-century economy. Europe\u2019s public services, industrial innovation and AI ambitions are increasingly built on a digital backbone it does not own, regulate or even fully understand. In that respect, this week\u2019s outage is no technical blip. It is a warning shot.<\/p>\n

The authors recommend scaling up sovereign cloud infrastructure, diversifying hardware supply chains and developing proprietary standards. It is hard to argue that Europe and the UK do otherwise: continuing in this vein risks the continent becoming a colony in the US\u2019s \u2013 or China\u2019s \u2013 digital empire. Nations are acting already. India and Brazil<\/a> are prioritising development of public digital systems to reduce reliance on foreign cloud providers. Germany and France have pushed<\/a> Gaia-X, a European framework for secure cloud services. The supermarket Lidl<\/a> is building its own cloud tech. Troublingly, Britain has no coherent<\/a> cloud strategy, leaving its systems dominated<\/a> by AWS and Microsoft.<\/p>\n

In a debate organised by UCL this summer, Mike\u00a0Bracken<\/a>, who used to run the UK\u2019s Government Digital Service, pushed back against ownership being a problem. By adopting open standards, he argued, Britain could gain all the advantages of cloud computing without having to reinvent the wheel. But this risks underplaying the strategic vulnerabilities that come from becoming dependent on private, foreign-owned cloud giants. Sovereignty isn\u2019t just the right to choose policy. It\u2019s the power to execute it without asking for permission. True resilience means\u00a0not relying on foreign servers to keep passengers flying, NHS hospitals<\/a> running, banking<\/a> apps working\u00a0\u2013 and government services online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted apps and websites around the world, affecting more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-244291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}