Whoops! The Internet Broke.
哎呀！互联网崩溃了。

Overnight, much of the world ground to a halt: Tens of thousands of flights and trains were canceled or delayed, hospitals stopped elective surgeries, doctors couldn’t book appointments, banks struggled to process transactions, television networks stopped broadcasting. The culprit was not a war, an earthquake, a mounting heat wave, or a terrorist attack, but some faulty computer code. It was likely the largest IT failure in history.
一夜之间，世界大部分地区陷入停滞：成千上万的航班和火车被取消或延误，医院停止了择期手术，医生无法预约，银行难以处理交易，电视网络停止广播。罪魁祸首不是战争、地震、日益严重的热浪或恐怖袭击，而是一些故障的计算机代码。这可能是历史上最大的 IT 故障。

An update to a piece of software provided by CrowdStrike, a popular cloud-based cybersecurity platform, introduced a bug that caused outages in millions of Windows devices. (A spokesperson for the firm, which controls some 15 percent of the market for security software, wrote in an email that “the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”) This wasn’t just a matter of large numbers of people not being able to log in to their email; industries and government agencies dependent on software for their most basic operations have been upended. A single company erred a single time, the web buckled, and the globe shuddered. It is as though the Y2K apocalypse has finally arrived, 24 and a half years later than expected.
一次由流行的云端网络安全平台 CrowdStrike 提供的软件更新引入了一个导致数百万 Windows 设备宕机的错误。（该公司的一位发言人在一封电子邮件中写道，“问题已被识别、隔离并已部署修复。”）这不仅仅是大量人无法登录电子邮件的问题；依赖软件进行最基本操作的行业和政府机构已经被颠覆。一家公司一次失误，网络崩溃，全球震动。仿佛 Y2K 末日终于到来，只是比预期晚了 24 年半。

Today’s outages demonstrate the extent to which the world has become dependent on the cloud. Yes, the cloud provides much of what you see on any given screen—social-media feeds, online health portals, digital shopping carts—but it is also responsible for many functions in the “real” world as well. The cloud stores your information in physical buildings; runs the software that hospitals depend on; facilitates the supply-chain and manufacturing logistics that produce and deliver everything in those carts to your door; connects the network of employees that write, edit, and illustrate this magazine.
今天的宕机事件展示了世界对云端的依赖程度。是的，云端提供了你在任何屏幕上看到的大部分内容——社交媒体动态、在线健康门户、数字购物车——但它也负责“现实”世界中的许多功能。云端在物理建筑中存储你的信息；运行医院依赖的软件；促进供应链和制造物流，生产并将购物车中的所有物品送到你家门口；连接撰写、编辑和插图本杂志的员工网络。

Software has instantaneous effects—which can prove disastrous given the slower pace of the physical world. In this case, fixing the bug that CrowdStrike introduced is not necessarily as simple as downloading a new update. The faulty code prevents every affected computer from working properly, which means they likely must be manually reconfigured by IT professionals. Fully resolving the problem could be a lengthy process.
软件具有即时效果——在物理世界的较慢节奏下，这可能会带来灾难性后果。在这种情况下，修复 CrowdStrike 引入的错误并不一定像下载新更新那么简单。故障代码使每台受影响的计算机无法正常工作，这意味着它们可能需要由 IT 专业人员手动重新配置。完全解决问题可能是一个漫长的过程。

CrowdStrike is only one of many tech companies that provide a cloud-based software service to much of the world. Google and Microsoft dominate email and office-work software; Workday takes care of accounting; Okta provides online sign-in services; CloudFlare supports the data centers littered across the globe. Underneath all that, just three firms—Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—account for roughly two-thirds of the cloud market. Despite their immense power, these companies are beholden to shareholders, not the public whose lives they shape. And because of their sprawl, it’s all the more probable that outages like today’s are not isolated, but global. With older, more traditional infrastructure, there may have been reason to fear a single bridge or tunnel collapsing because of faulty cement—the equivalent of one hospital or airline system needing to reboot today. The CrowdStrike situation shows how easily a million digital bridges, all built with the same company’s concrete, can crumble at once.
CrowdStrike 只是众多向世界提供云端软件服务的科技公司之一。谷歌和微软主导了电子邮件和办公软件；Workday 负责会计；Okta 提供在线登录服务；CloudFlare 支持遍布全球的数据中心。在这一切之下，仅有三家公司——亚马逊、谷歌和微软——占据了大约三分之二的云市场。尽管这些公司拥有巨大的权力，但它们对股东负责，而不是对其影响生活的公众负责。由于它们的扩展，今天这样的宕机事件更有可能不是孤立的，而是全球性的。对于较旧的、更传统的基础设施，可能会担心由于劣质水泥而导致单座桥梁或隧道倒塌——相当于今天需要重启的一家医院或航空系统。CrowdStrike 事件显示了同一家公司建造的数百万座数字桥梁如何轻易地同时崩塌。

The reach and importance of cloud-based software will define the century to come. Such tech outages have happened before, at smaller scales, and will happen again. Software and data servers have become a site of geopolitical contest. Protesters target cloud providers the way they would have previously blocked highways. It is clearer than ever that the internet is not some cumulus floating above modern civilization, but the ground it is built upon.
云端软件的影响力和重要性将定义未来的世纪。这样的技术宕机事件以前发生过，规模较小，并且还会再次发生。软件和数据服务器已经成为地缘政治争夺的场所。抗议者像以前封锁高速公路一样针对云服务提供商。互联网不再是现代文明上空漂浮的积云，而是其建立的基础，这一点比以往任何时候都更加清晰。