Author: Mika Amir
Graphics: Holly Ur
When the cloud powers the internet’s core, one shutdown can draw attention to society’s reliance on these systems — revealing the behind-the-scenes impacts of internet outages we cannot ignore.
Introduction
Part of the beauty of the internet is that it feels invisible. Websites output information, apps download in seconds, and companies run behind the scenes to provide us, as a society, with the services we want. Since the internet became widespread, its underlying infrastructure has largely gone unquestioned.
However, when cloud service outages occur, it suddenly becomes clear how much our lives rely on these services and how, within seconds, this invisible system becomes highly visible.
In recent years, cloud service or internet outages have occurred on a larger and more dramatic scale due to an increased reliance on centralized cloud-based services. These have largely resulted in financial losses, distrust in the product/company, and social concerns. These disruptions make clear how few cloud providers modern society relies on. While the infrastructure these companies provide is the backbone of the internet in many ways — enabling it to function efficiently and effectively —it also has significant vulnerabilities and risks.
- The internet heavily relies on cloud-based infrastructure, which serves as the backbone of the internet, and outages can affect many of those services at once.
Cloud Computing
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing services enable companies to store their data through data centers. Furthermore, these cloud companies provide access to IT services such as storage, computing power, databases, and server software that companies need to operate. These services are pay-as-you-go, which is beneficial for the companies using them, as they can rent these resources rather than build their own. These companies gain from economies of scale, enabling data centers to optimize and scale their services across many users, while also giving client companies the freedom to prioritize their product and sales operations by delegating technical complexity- related tasks. Some key cloud computing companies include: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, among many others. A few key cloud computing service models include: Platform as a Service (PaaS) (primarily used by developers to build applications), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (which provides essential computing and data storage resources), and Software as a Service (SaaS) (which delivers software applications over the internet).
These models allow companies to launch their services without investing in their own infrastructure, which can be very expensive and time-consuming to build. Over time, as more and more companies adopted these services, cloud computing became the backbone of the internet as we know it
The graph shows that the global cloud market is controlled by a very small number of companies, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, making up a total of 64% of total cloud spending in Q1 of 2023. This further illustrates the consequences that an internet outage on just one service provider could have on countless businesses. Thus, this figure further shows that centralized cloud infrastructure amplifies the cascade effect, where a single failure in one of these providers can impact many parts of the internet.
- Cloud computing is efficient and allows companies to rent computing power rather than sourcing their own.
- Major cloud computing providers hold power over the majority of the internet.
Why Cloud Computing Dominates the Internet
On a more technical level, these cloud providers give companies the valuable flexibility to adjust their consumption based on fluctuations in need. For example, when demand increases, they can expand almost instantly rather than sinking large sums into proprietary infrastructure that will always be either too much or not enough.
While this may sound ideal for the companies themselves, it raises the question: what happens when this system encounters a failure or error? The vulnerability caused by multi-company dependence on a small number of cloud providers can magnify the impact of single-firm problems.
The figure above illustrates the rapid growth of the global cloud computing market. As businesses have shifted their data and services online, the vast extent of cloud usage on the internet has come to light. As shown above, by 2030, the projected value of the cloud computing market will exceed 2.3 trillion, with a strong annual growth rate of 21.8%. This reinforces the idea that cloud computing dominates the digital ecosystem and will continue to do so in the coming years. Moreover, any disturbance to the cloud could prove to have widespread, even cascading effects on many services simultaneously.
The Cascade Effect of One Failure on the Internet
Large Scale Examples
The domino effect of a cloud outage in such a centralized system, naturally, can have many implications. Past outages, for instance, have temporarily disabled communication tools, streaming services, and other applications/websites, illustrating how quickly failures can propagate across dependent systems. However, these outages can have effects far beyond mere temporary inconveniences.
Beginning in early March 2026, a cloud service outage at Amazon Web Services facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) drew particular attention after reports that infrastructure had been affected by Iranian drone strikes. AWS provides distributed storage and computing services that are widely used by companies in this region, meaning that even a partial service outage would largely affect the region. Businesses that are dependent on cloud services experienced interruptions to internal systems and data inaccessibility, putting them in a bind operations-wise. AWS advised that companies back up their data and migrate their workloads to alternative facilities to mitigate the negative impact this shutdown had on them.
These broader issues within this incident illustrate how global conflict can directly impact cloud infrastructure, even beyond the scope of private companies. The United States and allied military forces are increasingly using cloud services to store information regarding their operations, including intelligence data, strategic plans, and weapon information. Therefore, disruptions to these systems not only affect business continuity but also create geopolitical technical failures that have broader and more serious implications. The AWS UAE case only further shows the depth of societal dependence on cloud-based infrastructure, demonstrating that cloud outages are not only technical failures, but can have dangerous effects in international affairs as well.
- The AWS outage in the UAE shows that centralized infrastructure, in which an outage at a single provider can still affect thousands of digital services.
Societal Implications
Economic Dangers and Effect on Education Systems
Economically, even a few hours of cloud service outages can cost businesses significant revenue. Given society’s reliance on technology, most companies can experience notable disruptions to business operations, such as payment delays, non-functional tools, or an inability to access important storage or data.
Education systems are also vulnerable. The October 2025 outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) demonstrated how cloud infrastructure is also deeply embedded in our education system. During the outage, many schools and universities across the United States experienced disruptions with educational platforms that they rely on for teaching and learning. These platforms included classroom tools and systems that encompassed tasks such as grading, test-taking, assignment submission centers, and online learning. Canvas, specifically, is reportedly used by over half of all 4,000 US universities. Schools like Columbia University reported that students could not access Canvas to look at course materials and submit assignments, resulting in significant interference with learning for the following days. This disturbance highlighted yet again the extent of our reliance on this infrastructure. When these cloud services fail, entire universities and companies lose access to tools and data that they rely on to deliver their services.
On a broader scale, the October 2025 outage affected more than 2,000 major organizations and over 70,000 total entities, combining to a total of 17 million+ user reports worldwide. In terms of total revenue, this outage financially led to about $581 million in insured damages, while overall losses surpassed $1 billion, with major websites losing roughly $75 million per hour.
Overall, it’s clear that much of the modern internet runs on cloud computing infrastructure. Because thousands of services depend on the same providers, a single outage can disrupt companies and their outputs. Whether it’s cloud failures resulting in companies losing revenue or schools that experience setbacks in teaching and learning, as society becomes more dependent on cloud-based infrastructure, outages reveal the risks of putting the internet’s backbone in the control of only a few providers.
- Increasing reliance on cloud-based infrastructure makes schools and classrooms also vulnerable to failures.
- Short outages can cause financial losses.
- With digital dependence comes increased reliance on the cloud-based infrastructure that powers the internet.
Take-Home Points
- Cloud computing is the backbone of the modern internet, meaning that a majority of the data and services that society uses are operated by a small number of providers.
- Cloud services have vulnerabilities and risks: when a cloud provider experiences technical issues, thousands of services and companies become unavailable at the same time.
- Internet outages have significant economic and social consequences. When services go offline, companies lose revenue and individuals lose trust in the business’s ability to provide what they need. Internet outages also affect schools, as seen during the October 2025 AWS outage, when online learning tools stopped working, halting learning and teaching.
- As more industries move their operations to being controlled by cloud-based infrastructure, it’s important to acknowledge how the modern internet runs on cloud computing, and thus so does our society.