Big Tech Consolidation Amplified the CrowdStrike Outage
On Friday, an update to a cybersecurity program took down Microsoft systems across the globe. Microsoft has resisted efforts to regulate a root cause of this chaos: the concentration of digital infrastructure in the hands of a few tech giants.
A large screen in the Dubai Metro malfunctions on July 19, 2024, amid a massive global technology outage. (Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images)
A little more than a year before Microsoft’s systems crashed on Friday, creating global chaos in the banking, airline, and emergency service industries, the company pushed back against regulators investigating the risks of a handful of cloud services companies controlling the world’s technological infrastructure, according to documents we reviewed.
“Regulators should carefully avoid any intervention that might disturb the competitive offerings that have promoted the explosive innovation and growth attributable to the cloud,” the company wrote in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 review of cloud computing companies’ security practices and interoperability protocols.
The agency questioned whether these companies “invest sufficient resources in research and development” of systems upon which the economy and government rely.
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