Regulate & Diversify Tech Gatekeepers to Prevent Widespread Outages of Essential Communications Infrastructure

BRUSSELS – Open Markets Europe Director Max von Thun weighs in on today’s widespread IT outage and how it exposes the great risk in monopolistic corporations controlling our communications systems. 

“Today’s massive IT outage – potentially the biggest in history – is a clear demonstration of the dangerous and growing levels of concentration in our critical technology systems. This includes concentration in operating systems, cloud computing, and security software, all of which combined to create today’s catastrophic failure. 

“These IT systems increasingly undergird many of our most essential services, from air transportation and financial services to healthcare and journalism. Yet despite their systemic role, the corporations providing these critical yet highly opaque systems – in particular Microsoft, Amazon and Google – face shockingly little public scrutiny or accountability. 

“This has to change. Today’s dominant tech giants need to be recognized for what they are – essential utilities – and regulated accordingly. This includes not just ensuring their infrastructure is secure and resilient, but also eliminating their ability to abuse their market power over customers. We also urgently need to develop alternatives to today’s cloud computing oligopoly, including by redirecting public procurement budgets towards competitors, and investing in secure public cloud infrastructure.” 

 Open Markets has long warned against allowing just a handful of powerful gatekeeper corporations to control the bulk of our communications infrastructure.  

·       In 2021, following outages at Facebook that impacted users across its multiple platforms, Open Markets led 14 organizations in calling on the Financial Stability Oversight Council to designate Amazon Web Services and other dominant cloud computing platforms as Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities (“SIFMUs”) which would bring the few dominant cloud providers under the supervision of the Federal Reserve.  

·       We continue to support measures to bring greater oversight to dominant cloud providers. In our 2023 report on monopoly dominance of the artificial intelligence pipeline, "AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat,” we recommended recognizing cloud computing as an essential infrastructure, separating ownership and control from the largest gatekeeper platforms, and regulating it as a public utility.  

·       At our June 27, 2024 event, “Fixing the Information Crisis,” several of our expert panelists also weighed in on the need for greater oversight of the cloud. 

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