China Escapes Global Cyber Outage Thanks to Strategic Tech Decisions
While the rest of the world was dealing with the dreaded blue screen of death on Friday, China managed to avoid the chaos largely unscathed. The reason behind this fortunate escape is quite simple: CrowdStrike, the American cybersecurity firm at the center of the outage, is hardly used in China.
Unlike many other countries, very few organizations in China purchase software from American firms that have been vocal about cybersecurity threats posed by Beijing. Additionally, China is not as reliant on Microsoft as the rest of the world, with domestic tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei dominating the cloud services market.
Reports of outages in China were mainly limited to foreign firms or organizations, with some users on Chinese social media platforms complaining about not being able to check into international chain hotels like Sheraton, Marriott, and Hyatt in Chinese cities.
Over the years, China has been steadily replacing foreign IT systems with domestic ones, creating what some analysts refer to as a “splinternet.” This strategic move has insulated China’s essential services, such as banking and aviation, from global disruptions.
Cybersecurity expert Josh Kennedy White praised China’s handling of foreign tech operations, highlighting how Microsoft operates in China through a local partner, 21Vianet, which manages services independently of its global infrastructure.
Beijing’s approach to avoiding reliance on foreign systems is seen as a way to bolster national security, similar to how some Western countries have banned Chinese tech firm Huawei’s technology. The US has also imposed restrictions on sales of advanced semiconductor chip tech to China, citing national security concerns.
In response to the recent cyber outage, a state-run newspaper in China criticized the US for dictating global technology use while one of its own companies caused chaos through negligence. The editorial also took aim at internet giants for monopolizing the industry and advocated for inclusive governance of network security.
While not everything in China was completely unaffected by the global cyber incident, a small number of workers expressed gratitude to Microsoft for inadvertently giving them an early vacation. The hashtag “Thank you Microsoft for an early vacation” trended on Chinese social media platform Weibo, with users sharing pictures of blue error screens.
