Illustration: Nadia Médez/WIRED Middle East

The Microsoft IT outage made headlines today for shutting down businesses temporarily, a harrowing reminder of our dependence on technology and, crucially, the internet. While an actual, long-term global internet shutdown is improbable, there are a few ways it could happen.

In early May, the strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years hit Earth. For many, it meant the ability to enjoy the northern lights at much lower latitudes. For others, it disrupted radio and GPS communications, interrupted the broadband internet connection provided by Starlink, and caused minor disruptions to power grids.

Categorized as a G4/G5 (severe/extreme) geomagnetic storm event by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, the damage was nowhere near as bad as some feared, thanks in large part to the mitigating steps taken by the NOAA. For years, doomsayers had suggested a geomagnetic storm of sufficient magnitude could push us back to the Dark Ages, damaging the submarine communication cables that carry the vast majority of data and pushing satellites out of orbit. In such a scenario, much of the modern technology that ensures the smooth running of our societies would be rendered irrelevant.

Although nowhere near as strong as more powerful known historical events, such storms highlight our dependency on technology, especially the internet, and the potentially devastating repercussions if it were to be lost. We rely on the internet to maintain every facet of our lives: to work, to bank, to shop, to communicate, to read, to learn, to travel, to meet people. “We are to some degree entirely dependent on it,” admits Faris Yakob, co-founder of Genius Steals and a former chief technology strategist at McCann Erickson. “It is rapidly becoming an operating system for everyday life. My dad is unable to pay for parking because he must use an app. The light bulbs, fridge and vacuum cleaner in my house need to connect to it. And at a more structural level, it’s the communication infrastructure for modernity, which necessarily operates fast.”

Illustration: Nadia Médez/WIRED Middle East

A quick survey of our own homes gives us an idea of how dependence on the Internet spans nearly every aspect of modern life. Beyond the obvious forms of communication (WhatsApp, Zoom, social media, email, etc.), the number of internet-connected devices per household in the US now stands at around 17 (it was one or two in the early 2000s), according to research released by Parks Associates in January. We stream shows on Netflix, buy goods and services online, and increasingly work from home, which requires access to cloud computing services such as Microsoft Azure (the reason why the Microsoft IT outage is serious) and collaborative tools like Google Workspace. We date using apps such as Tinder and Bumble, track our health through wearable tech, and bank remotely on our phones.

“Over the last three decades, I have watched as our reliance on the internet has grown exponentially to the point where I firmly believe most of us consider the internet to be as important to our daily lives as electricity and water,” says Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer at The Envisioners. “These days, we would even struggle to maintain any kind of connection with the outside world when even our home telephones and televisions are increasingly internet–based. More broadly, without the internet, the economy freezes, transportation stops, and social services like healthcare, public safety and security, education, and welfare would all be dramatically affected. At the same time, we would risk losing key utilities such as electricity, gas, and water. Basically, without the internet, we are likely to be both figuratively and literally in the dark.”

From an economic perspective, the financial cost of any loss of the internet would be colossal. “It’s not just, ‘oh no, the Wi-Fi is down’, it’s that information and therefore money cannot move and no one can coordinate,” says Yakob. Most of us would be unable to work, online banking services would be disrupted, stock markets and financial trading platforms would shut down, e-commerce would come to a standstill, and our ability to pay for goods and services in an increasingly cashless society would be compromised. In 2016, the Global Network Initiative released a report called ‘The Economic Impact of Disruptions to Internet Connectivity’. Prepared by Deloitte and funded by Facebook, the report estimated that an average high–connectivity country would stand to lose at least 1.9 percent of its daily GDP for each day internet services were down.

These economic losses would increase exponentially over time as cascading failures in global supply chains, limited access to food, water, and fuel, and social unrest began to have a knock-on effect. Any prolonged loss of the internet would see society as we know it begin to fracture. Many energy and utility companies use digital twins to monitor and manage their grids, meaning blackouts and service interruptions would occur. Government services, transportation, healthcare, and education would all be jeopardized. Such losses would be compounded by our rejection of analog technology, such as landline telephones and AM/FM radio, meaning communication would revert to verbal conversations.

We can get a sense of what could occur by looking at what is currently happening. In 2023, Access Now, a non–profit organization focused on digital civil rights, documented 283 shutdowns in 39 countries, making it the worst year for internet shutdowns ever recorded. In Sudan, internet blackouts have deepened the country’s humanitarian crisis, blocked access to emergency services and medicine, frozen banking services, disrupted work and study, and “left people disconnected, stranded, hungry, and afraid”. In Gaza, fluctuating internet access has denied Palestinians access to life–saving information and the ability to document human rights violations and atrocities. These shutdowns are not always accidental: they are used strategically to disrupt the free flow of information and to silence dissident voices.

In the Indian state of Manipur, a government-imposed internet shutdown triggered by community violence lasted seven months, leading to widespread chaos, says the Internet Society. Not only did the population lose access to web-based employment, online healthcare, and distance learning, it had no connection to the outside world, thereby hindering the documentation of atrocities and exposing business owners dependent on connectivity to the risks of homelessness and starvation. As Amrita Choudhury, president of Internet Society Delhi, said, such shutdowns can be life–critical.

This is just a glimpse of what could occur. But is the loss of the internet on a far wider scale plausible? And what could cause it? A much stronger G5 scale geomagnetic storm has the potential to knock out power grids for prolonged periods, leading to indirect loss of the internet, although proactive steps to mitigate against the impact of such a storm means the much-feared doomsday scenario of widespread disruption is unlikely. That doesn’t mean anybody should relax. “The sun is still entering the peak of its 11–year cycle of activity, which means that other impactful geomagnetic storms are more likely the rest of this year and on into 2025 and perhaps even 2026,” says Shawn Dahl, a space weather forecaster at the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “That means we must remain prepared and vigilant.”

Cybercrime is also a significant threat, although attacks tend to disrupt internet services and infrastructure temporarily. Yet the internet shutdowns happen most often when those in control deny access to others. We have seen this recently in Sudan, India, and Gaza, as mentioned above, and Yakob acknowledges that “it’s not impossible to imagine certain states in certain places attempting to turn the internet off for certain parts of the population”. As Access Now notes, governments around the world continue to shut down the internet and critical digital communication platforms to “muzzle expression, block access to life–saving information, and cover up heinous crimes against humanity”.

However, the internet is designed to be resilient. It is built on the principle of multiple pathways, explains Coplin, either physically through cables (undersea and terrestrial) or logically through protocols such as BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and DNS (Domain Name System). These protocols provide a fluid and adaptable approach to the transfer of information, ensuring continuity and robustness in the face of disruption. “We also live in an era of cloud computing where, unlike just a decade or so ago, cloud providers often mirror services and data in other geographies with the specific purpose of minimizing the risk of any potential regional disruption,” adds Coplin.

That said, we live in a complicated world, and a large part of that world remains beyond our control. We also live with the knowledge that we would be hopeless as modern societies if the internet went down with another Microsoft IT outage, although 2.6 billion people across the world still have no access to the internet, according to the International Telecommunication Union. As such, 33 percent of the global population currently gets along without it.

“I’m reminded of a regular conversation I have with my brother who often worries about such things,” says Coplin. “He’s occasionally sufficiently concerned about our reliance on technology that he makes a point of retaining the analog skills of our childhood. He does complicated long division in his head and on weekends can often be found in his garden practicing his bushcraft, cooking on an open fire just so he can be ready for when the walls of our digital lives come tumbling down. I’m not saying he’s wrong, but if something has caused a major global internet outage, I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a lot more to worry about than calculating the surface area of a sphere or not burning our sausages.” 

*This story is from our Summer 2024 issue. Stay tuned for more in-depth stories.

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