After Facebook, big tech outages may be doomsday scenario in future conflict - analysis

• Published date: 05 October 2021
• Author: SETH J. FRANTZMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Large swaths of the world rely on these platforms and services, which are largely unregulated by governments, to send messages, make calls, receive information and coordinate meetings and daily life.

This is not just a small part of people's lives in the modern age. The age of the Internet has rapidly shifted power into the hands of a few large tech giants that operate as monopolies for hosting, distributing and disseminating information.

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However, they also control other networks that increasingly serve as stand-ins for phone networks.

When the Internet age began in the 1990s, it provided a radical new way for people to access information; previously, there was only print media, television and radio. The nature of the Internet, interactive in ways the other three weren't, meant it rapidly began to inhabit a multiplicity of places in people's lives that hitherto were not thought possible.

Soon after, the Internet provided an alternative way to watch television – streaming sites and YouTube. This quickly became true for radio and other mediums. News went online, battering major legacy media and challenging its survival. Product sales, or shopping, moved online, as did the creation of portals for people to chat, message, communicate and create virtual versions of themselves.

The most recent revolution has been the binding of these various elements under the power of Big Tech companies – like Facebook. What this means is that while the Internet age of the late 1990s and early 2000s was a unique free-for-all Wild West, the new age reflects more the era of the robber barons of the US in the late 19th century – the monopolies and trusts that came to dominate the industry through horizontal and vertical integration.

Big Tech companies are so large they now have gobbled up swaths of the Internet and control the way in which most information and communications flow.

AN OUTAGE like the one that occurred on Monday is not unprecedented. Various large Big Tech sites have crashed in the past, usually for a short time. There has also been an increase in cyber incidents over the last few years, including cyberattacks that have targeted critical infrastructure, whether in Israel, the US or other places.

The question that should be asked increasingly by governments is how they can replicate or maintain communication and major Internet...