In the early morning of July 19th, 2024, an immense IT failure caused damage around the world, with repercussions that will be felt for months, resulting in, according to some specialists, the greatest cybernetic interruption in history[1]. The disruptions affected several countries, resulting in the cancellation of more than 3,300 flights, paralysation of banking and business operations, temporary suspension of school and government services and instability in critical sectors, including health and emergency services.
This massive technical fault originated with CrowdStrike, a U.S. company widely contracted by the global tech industry. It employs 8,500 people and serves 24,000 clients[2], one of which is Microsoft, which utilizes CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform to monitor systems for malware and cyber attacks.
According to statements from CrowdStrike and Microsoft, the cause of the digital outage was due to an update to Falcon that led to the infamous “blue screen of death” on Microsoft operating systems, which includes cloud-computing infrastructure as well as PCs running Windows. According to Microsoft, besides the social and economic impacts, the outage affected only “8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines” [3].
Understanding this scenario becomes fundamental in an increasingly digital world. As such, the facts leading to the resulting chaos may serve as a turning point in the debate, calling upon us to scrutinize the whole chain, and its hold on and control of the digital world, so that we may rethink it and redesign it.
“And what does this outage reveal?”
“What this outage reveals is the massive dominance of both Microsoft and CrowdStrike in computer software and cyber security,” affirms British economist Michael Roberts, with data demonstrating that Microsoft Windows possesses about 72% of the global market share of operating systems, “while CrowdStrike’s market share in the ‘endpoint protection’ security category is 24%.”
When we analyze data regarding digital infrastructure, the scenario is no different. One example is the layers responsible for providing connection and access to the internet. In Brazil, for example, Google and Meta have installed fiber optic cables on the coastal areas of the most strategic states for the country’s data traffic. Starlink has dominated, since 2022, satellite broadband internet in Amazônia, with antennas installed in more than 90% of the region's municipalities.
This process of monopolization of the digital world has been reinforced for decades through a combination of strategies that range from the gatekeeping of knowledge to the influence upon members of agencies and nonprofits that make decisions on internet governance.
The fact is that, as explained by Theotônio dos Santos in the book Revolução Científico-Técnica e Capitalismo Contemporâneo (1983), monopolistic companies understand that, to have direct control of production—in the case under analysis here, the digital market—it is necessary to control knowledge. This control has become essential in shortening the time between scientific discoveries and their practical application, which takes form in new products and processes. As such, knowledge has been transformed into a fundamental instrument in the process of capitalist accumulation.
In Brazil, this phenomenon is a perfect match for a type of dependent capitalism and finds favor in the neoliberal state, one characteristic of which is the express reduction in investment in areas crucial to the processes of invention, innovation and technological development. Consequently, reduced investment in science and technology—averaging just 1% of the GDP—combines with a growing privatization and outsourcing of infrastructure, products and services offered by large tech companies.
In such an environment, the country not only compromises its economic growth, it also deepens its technological dependence, which is seen, for example, in the absence of sovereignty of technological infrastructure and in data collection, storage and processing services, which are transferred to these corporations. One example of this is Serpro, a state-owned company that, instead of investing in its own servers, has opted to hire cloud services from one of the world’s largest tech companies.
There are those who claim that the regulation of this scenario could resolve the monopolization of our digital world. However, as Michael Roberts states: “Regulation of capitalist ‘for-profit’ companies by government regulatory agencies has been a proven failure in just about every sector” (2024, n.p.).
The question really comes down to understanding investment in science and technology as a central component of the accumulation of capital. Effectively, the monopolization process has turned the state into an essential tool in guaranteeing the continuation and enhancement of this process. As such, we can and should call upon the state to take over the task of transforming that reality, bringing the digital world into the public realm, maintaining sovereignty over digital infrastructure and gradually eliminating our technological dependence.
References:
AVELINO, Rodolfo da Silva. Colonialismo Digital: Tecnologias de Rastreamento Online e a Economia Informacional. São Paulo: Editora Alameda, 2023.
MICROSOFT. Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage. Retrieved July 21, 2024 from https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-throu…
REGAN, Helen et al. Today's cyber outage could be "largest in history," cybersecurity expert says. CNN. Retrieved July 22, 2024 from https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/global-outage-intl-hnk#h_c3622dc75519703ce2734d31a98f6a5e
ROBERTS, Michael. Crowd Strikes Out. 2022. Retrieved July 22, 2024 from https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/21/crowd-strikes-out/
SANTOS, Theotônio dos. Revolução Científico-Técnica e Capitalismo Contemporâneo. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes Ltda, 1983. Rua Frei Luís, 100, 25600 Petrópolis, RJ, Brasil.
[1] See: REGAN, Helen et al. Today's cyber outage could be "largest in history," cybersecurity expert says. CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/global-outage-intl-hnk#h_c3622dc75519703ce2734d31a98f6a5e
[2] ROBERTS, Michael. Crowd strikes out. Retrieved from https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/21/crowd-strikes-out/ .
[3] MICROSOFT. Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage. Retrieved from https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/