Major cloud services companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle may cut off Russia’s access to cloud services in days to come. Already, Amazon has suspended new service signups.
This is a different tack than the “network nuclear option” that some have discussed. The disadvantages with ending routing of IP traffic to Russia – essentially, cutting it off at layer 3 – are manifold. It may not be practical, it may affect other countries, and above all, it has a lot of collateral damage such as making it difficult for ordinary Russians to communicate outside Russia.
However, turning off access for Russian businesses who rely on Office 365, Amazon Web Services, Google Compute, etc. is primarily an economic matter, not an information-flow one. These Russian firms are buying services from American companies who may decide to terminate that business. While the Russians can replace some of this capability internally (for example, generic IaaS hosting), replicating the functionality of an Office 365 or a Salesforce from scratch is not going to happen any time soon. Besides, vital data is already stored in these systems and access to it may be lost.
Do you think that Russian companies have long since moved off Western systems, or do you think this move would be painful?
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If businesses do this it will be the beginning of the end for them. Because everyone will wonder if it might happen to them next for whatever reason. Cancel culture on a grand scale. Who knows what the excuse might be?
This is Iraq MkII and everyone is blindly cheering it on again in the same way. It’s just as dubious because NATO and the US have spent the last few years provoking Russia on its borders. It’s laughable for us to try and take the moral high ground after what we did in Iraq, Libya, Syria…
This is the problem with censorship. It used to be that “the right” were the censors and “the left” would protect free speech so that all ideas could be debated. The people with the “question authority” bumper stickers are embracing the very things they opposed before. Cancel culture now leaves us with one-sided propaganda where “the party” tells us what we are to think is true. Think correctly (think the way we do) or you need to be excluded from everything.
The fact that private companies are doing this is of no consequence because the result is the same. You could make the case that this cozy relationship between government and big business IS fascism. It is certainly totalitarian groupthink and strongly echoes horrific times in history. The new tool of fascism is the ESG rating (corporate) and social credit score (private). Step out of line and they’ll destroy you and your business by cutting off what used to be known as “public accommodations”. For some reason today we’ve decided that if we find someone else’s ideas repugnant that we can just cut them off from the world and deny them services we offer everyone else. Welcome to your dystopian future.
There IS another side to this story, but you won’t be allowed to hear it and judge for yourself–if we keep shutting down opposing voices. All of the major media are in “lock step” suppressing anything but the official narrative. That SHOULD make you suspicious, but I think we’ve all become accustomed to letting the Ministry of Truth tell us what to think over these last two years. This is the World Economic Forum’s goal of “owning nothing” in action. Tow the ideological line or we cut off your monthly services. What’s next? Support Trump (or later on Biden) and get your water and Office 365 cut off? (Some of you would actually think that’s a good idea.)
P.S. For the record, I don’t think there are any good guys in this Ukraine/Russia battle, so please don’t accuse me of being an apologist for anyone.
If NATO was provoking Russia then Russia should invade NATO. This is propaganda talks about “provoking”. Russia specially targeted Ukraine for latest 20 years, and had time to made up hundred of excuses that captures your attention from primary point – invasion to suverign country to occupy teritury and most importantly – destroy ukrainian nation.
Visa and Mastercard cards for the foreign payments stopped working on 7 March, despite that Visa/MC claimed that would happen on 10 March. That may be our banks or external processors which disable the payments before the date, I don’t know, but I could not pay for my OVH servers with EUR Visa card.
“Russia Is Now the World’s Most Sanctioned Country”, says Castellum https://www.castellum.ai/insights/russia-is-now-the-worlds-most-sanctioned-country
Every day I wake up, check the news, only to discover that another set of major well-known companies have left Russia or preparing for that. Today (9 March 2022) it’s McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca Cola and Pepsi. I believe it’s more than 300 companies already.
Ukrainians are collaborating to disable Russia from the western companies and services with cancel culture. Check this for example: https://www.facebook.com/dennydov/posts/10166185120075125
A lot of great news agencies have either ceased its operation or got blocked by Russian government, the count is now 40+.
VPS/Cloud/Dedicated server providers in Russia have super high demand, everything is basically sold out. Some prepare for the foreign internet shutdown, others just move their servers fearing that the foreign company will stop operation with Russians.
Where do you think this whole matter/experience goes next, ValdikSS? Hopefully there will be peace.
Came back to write about Russian office suites, but you’ve deleted my message. Nice.
Is this a reflection of Stevenson (Snowcrash), or Sterling (Distraction)? ¿Porque no los dos?
*Stephenson
How they (big clouds) mean to implement such a measures? Subnet/ASN? VPN. Wired payments’ requisites? Nobody uses wires to pay some bucks now. Until they can’t afford FBI to uncover every their new customer, all other measures will be of compromise nature, like old Gitlab’s checkbox “i swear i’m not from crimea”.
But small-to-middle businesses in Russia don’t really care about ToSes (actually we don’t even read the majority on them). So imho small-to-middle russian businesses will continue to use western services at the price of few minor inconveniences.
Completely other extreme is a termination of currently provided services implying vital data loss or inaccessibility. I don’t think customers will ever return to provider after such a destructive decision.