Could Amazon Doom the US?
Amazon Web Services is the backbone of much of the economy and the government. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is a cloud computing platform which enables companies to do a number of things, such as store data, and increase their computing power.
Today, AWS underpins a significant portion of global internet infrastructure. Over 90% of Fortune 100 companies use AWS services, and hundreds of Fortune 500 firms rely on AWS for at least part of their operations.
These companies are ones which much of America uses or relies on, like Bank of America, Capital One, Apple, Coinbase, Robinhood, Venmo, Snapchat, Reddit, Netflix, Disney, and more. So, it goes without saying, if you weren’t able to access much of your services during that latest outage, you were not alone.
It is evidently undeniable that AWS provides a service to their customers that is valuable to them. And while that service is good for the companies, the increased concentration of companies relying on AWS is a problem for consumers and potentially the US as a whole.
AWS has several major government contracts that represent billions in federal spending, and approximately 7,500 government agencies use its services worldwide. In August of this year, the General Services Administration announced “OneGov”, included in which was $1 billion in direct incentive credits for AWS cloud services, modernisation support, and training for federal agencies through the end of 2028. AWS, in December of 2022, was awarded a six-year contract by the Department of Defense. A $724 million five-year contract in 2022, which provides the Navy access to AWS commercial cloud environments, AWS GovCloud, AWS Secret Region, and AWS training and certification programs. The CIA made a groundbreaking $600 million deal over a decade ago, which brought highly classified systems to the cloud for the first time using AWS.
The US government uses AWS for various essential functions. The Department of Defense, for example, uses AWS for autonomous systems management, and real-time battlefield data processing. The CIA and NSA use AWS for classified data storage, processing, and sharing across all 18 intelligence agencies. Other federal agencies use AWS for government services, fraud detection, benefits deliveries, healthcare systems, and public safety operations. Other vital entities like energy and utility companies use AWS for managing operations, security, and resilience of critical US infrastructure.
There’s no doubt that AWS is providing a service to the government that is extremely beneficial. In fact, the Chief Information Officer at the CIA stated last year that “had it not been for the partnership with AWS that CIA took over 10 years ago … would not be here today.”
Yet, their reliance by so many government agencies and major companies in the United States, with classified data and critical economic information flowing through AWS, It begs the question, are we creating a single point of failure that any adversarial nation could exploit?
If the recent and past outages are any indication, Amazon Web Services must defend itself like any nation. Because if they go down, the government can go down, our national intelligence can go down. And so, too, can our economy.
The United States and its economy has essentially provided a clear and open target that any adversarial nation can exploit: a private company that power a substantial share of the world’s cloud infrastructure. And an attack doesn’t need to shut down AWS’s systems for long to disrupt the government and the economy. Some experts estimate just hours of downtime could cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars due to lost productivity and suspended business activities, which measures success in milliseconds. And who knows how effective a well-timed attack could be during a war, be it physical or cyber.
This single point of failure, as cybersecurity experts call it, is a growing problem and may continue to grow. Cybersecurity experts point out that only three or four cloud computing platforms process much of the world’s online activities, and that attacking any one of them could cause devastating effects.
As it stands, there have been a number of major outages, much of which have come from AWS, but some from others as well. This past outage lasted approximately 12 hours due to a system failure in one of AWS’s regions. In June of this year, Google Cloud and Cloudflare, as a result of an overload in Google’s service control infrastructure, impacted a number of major services. In 2024, the infamous CrowdStrike and Microsoft 365 failure caused $5.4 billion in losses and harmed the healthcare, finance, and aviation sectors. AWS also had a 3-hour outage in March of 2023, and a 7-hour outage in December of 2021.
The United States, and indeed the Western world, has just shown its adversaries their exact weak spot. And who would have thought – it’s Amazon.
*Williams is the manager and Sole Owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.