Microsoft outage exposes global digital fragility

A massive Microsoft 365 outage, affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, paralyzed governments, hospitals, and police in 74 countries for a second day, highlighting the world's fragile dependence on a few tech giants. Services are slowly recovering, but experts warn it is a critical wake-up call. Microsoft has not given a clear official cause, citing "steady improvements" and ruling out a cyberattack. Initial estimates point to cascading server failures in data centers due to "increased load" after several servers went offline simultaneously. The incident is being compared to the 2021 Facebook blackout, with critics noting the severity is amplified by the critical nature of the affected services. The outage has reignited political debate over digital resilience. The UK parliament's science committee chair highlighted the lack of infrastructure robustness, while European countries, led by France, are exploring open-source alternatives to reduce reliance on US tech giants. Observers also link the crisis to Microsoft's recent mass layoffs and its heavy use of AI to generate code.