Was this week’s Amazon Web Services outage a harbinger of doom? According to one expert… maybe.
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“In the spirit of Art Bell, I’d just like to say that we’re all doomed,” Paul Hochman, president of Humongous Media jokingly told WBBM Newsradio’s Rob Hart. Bell was a broadcaster known for covering topics like conspiracy theories and UFOs during his late-night show.
Hochman – formerly the tech editor for the “Today Show” – joined Hart this week on the Noon Business Hour to talk about our increasingly vulnerable digital platforms, especially as investment into artificial intelligence (AI) grows.
“Let’ start with how, you know, everybody [who] went through that Amazon Web Services, AWS outage is aware that… websites went down, certain transactions couldn’t be done… everything from doctor’s appointments to, you know, massive transactions of funds,” said Hochman. “I mean, this was massive and major. Now, here’s why: AI infrastructure is notably fragile.”
During the hours-long outage Monday, companies like Ring, Venmo, and Snapchat were impacted around the world. Flights were also impacted along with numerous other services and businesses.
Lance Ulanoff, editor-at-large at TechRadar’s described the outage as “an internet earthquake.”
Proponents of AI have touted its ability to improve efficiency, Hochman noted. However, its own makeup is more delicate than people might realize. For instance, it is impacted by what Hochman called a “very fragile global chip supply chain.” Then, he said there are “significant cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” to worry about, and a “growing dependence on huge resource intensive data centers.”
“The main reason it's fragile, in addition to all those the things I just listed, is frankly because it’s growing so fast,” said Hochman. “In other words, you are literally in this situation, building the airplane while you’re flying it. You can’t build security fast enough to defend against something that isn’t built yet, and yet, once it is built and it’s changing quickly, then security hasn’t caught up.”
While Hochman also said that there are people working on mitigating the potential risks, he also said those risks are “huge.” As the internet grows, there are more and more places where attacks or glitches can take hold.
“What they call it in the business is an increased attack surface,” Hochman explained. “In other words… because it’s growing so quickly and because so many people are involved – both people building it and using it… there’s basically a proliferation of AI systems and agentic AI. Anybody who has not heard about that, basically that means marshaling AI forces to do lots of interrelated tasks for you, from bookkeeping to invoicing to you name it. All of those steps, every single one of those steps, the more exposed to AI it is, the more the larger your attack service.”