Why did Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services fail?

The 21st century runs on, for all intents and purposes, magic—the internet. Our technology is so advanced that we can instantly send money overseas, travel across the world in a day, and talk to someone face-to-face who’s thousands of miles away without even thinking twice. A few fancy mattresses even connect to your phone. 

We’ve become dependent on these services. Very few of us stop to ask, How does this all work? Until it all goes wrong. 

Last week, a company you’ve probably never heard of, Cloudflare, experienced significant outages. It meant many people couldn’t access X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, and more. 

Last month, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a catastrophic failure. Everything from the McDonald’s App, to Amazon itself, to Ring doorbells, to homework submission sites at Ivy League schools was affected. 

What are these companies? Why did these outages happen? And what can these outages teach us about how we rely on things we don’t understand? 

What was the October AWS outage? 

First, the AWS outage. AWS is the largest provider of cloud computing, which basically means it stores data for websites and apps. 

Think about it. The internet needs to be stored somewhere. The web doesn’t just float in the air. It needs to run on actual, physical computers. A handful of companies, like Google, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, control most of these massive data centers. Cloud storage is a trillion-dollar industry because every website and app depends on storing data somewhere. 

A minor bug sent shockwaves through their data hosting services. Basically, web pages and apps have addresses, and when you try to load a website or app, it retrieves information from the data centers by sending a request. AWS’s “phone book” tells the computer where to “call” to get this data. The phone book broke. 

AWS fixed the bug within a few hours, but the ripple effects lasted for about a day. It was a stark reminder of how much a single mistake could affect millions of people—and just how much we depend on these services without realizing it. 

Why was Cloudflare down?

Cloudflare was a smaller incident. Cloudflare provides security for a vast percentage of the internet. They make sure malicious bots don’t infiltrate websites. The BBC reports 20 percent of “all websites worldwide use its services in some form.” 

A minor bug in the code led the service to identify most users as bots, and it wouldn’t load the sites. People received error messages while trying to access X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT, but other sites were affected, too. 

Initially, the engineers believed it was an attack on Cloudflare itself. Then, they realized it was an error on their part. They have to update their systems frequently in a constant game of cat and mouse to protect websites from hackers.

In short, we were given stark reminders over the past month or so of how much we depend on things we don’t understand working in the background—and how they can break. 

The spiritual realm behind the scenes

It’s sometimes surprising how little the Bible speaks to the workings of the spiritual realm. The work of the late Dr. Michael Heiser, as seen in The Unseen Realm, which I reviewed, can help peel back the curtain. We occasionally encounter cryptic windows, as when Gabriel tells Daniel that he was held up fighting the demon, the “Prince of Persia,” for 21 days (Daniel 10:13), but ultimately, the Bible rarely speaks to the inner workings of the spiritual realm.

Nevertheless, Christians are told to go on the attack against the powers of darkness. With his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus (probably) stood next to a site that was considered a literal gate to Hades by the Greeks and pronounced, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) In other words, Christians are meant to go on the offensive. 

At the same time, Paul tells us how to equip ourselves for spiritual warfare: “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Ephesians 6:13) We’re to put on the shoes of readiness to spread peace, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. Then, he says, we must pray continually. 

So we know what to do, even if we don’t fully understand how the spiritual realm works. 

Just like Cloudflare protects the internet until something goes wrong, sometimes spiritualizing situations in the wrong way or being superstitious can backfire as well. Last month, I spoke about Sean Feucht, a worship artist and Christian nationalist who can use hyper-spiritualized warfare language to deepen cultural divides, rather than bring peace to his neighbors. Too many Christians take on spiritual warfare language and apply it to people, when Paul clearly says, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” (vs. 12).

Although we often mess up our spiritual warfare, there’s one spiritual process running in the background that will never fail. 

The one unseen “system” that won’t fail 

A mysterious, profound truth is that all of reality imminently depends on Jesus. Colossians 1:16–17: “For by [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” As John Piper so eloquently puts it, “He holds the world, all history, and our lives in his hands, and actively keeps them ticking by the millisecond.”

Unbelievers don’t recognize or acknowledge this metaphysical reality of the universe’s dependence on God, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t actively working in the background, upholding the information of all existence. Unlike internet cloud services, he will never fail.

Will you give thanks to him for his all-sustaining power? Will you give him the glory? 

How can you put on spiritual armor today?