Asger Risom
Automation replaces staff — and the internet breaks.
Automation replaces staff — and the internet breaks.
A breakdown that froze the web
Hundreds of websites, apps, and payment systems around the world went offline after a major failure in Amazon Web Services, the company’s global cloud platform.
A worldwide impact
The outage disrupted everything from news sites to online stores and banking systems, leaving millions without access for several hours.
The invisible backbone
AWS provides cloud hosting for millions of companies. When it fails, the effects spread instantly across the global internet.
Where it began
The crash started in Amazon’s data centers in Northern Virginia in the United States, a key hub for its worldwide cloud network.
A system built on automation
At the center of the issue was DynamoDB, Amazon’s “serverless” database service designed to manage performance and security automatically.
The bug that broke everything
Amazon later confirmed that a defect in its automated domain-name management software caused a chain reaction of system failures.
When AI misfires
The company’s artificial intelligence systems, which manage AWS’s infrastructure, struggled to respond fast enough — turning a local issue into a global outage.
The human factor
Just months earlier, Amazon had laid off hundreds of engineers working in its AWS division, replacing much of their work with automation and AI tools.
No one left to fix it
When the failure hit, the automated systems couldn’t resolve it. Engineers eventually had to step in manually to restore services.
A costly experiment
The company has since acknowledged that the error “was not automatically fixed,” highlighting the risks of removing human oversight from critical systems.
The lesson
Automation can improve efficiency, but without experienced people monitoring it, even small errors can bring the digital world to a standstill.
This article is made and published by Asger Risom, which may have used AI in the preparation
