The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question.

The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden.

The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.

The presentations indicate the company also marketed systems meant to monitor prisons, like those in which China is currently believed to be holding an untold number of Uyghurs in the Western province of Xinjiang. The system tracked prisoners’ labor productivity, as well as their time spent in reeducation classes and data that might indicate the effectiveness of those classes.

Additionally, the materials appeared to market workplace surveillance tools, meant to monitor employees’ workplace performance and to spot workers who spend time resting or using personal electronics on the clock.

Huawei denial

In a statement provided to VOA, a Huawei spokesperson said, “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report.”

It continued, “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards. Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics. Privacy protection is our top priority and we require that all parts of our business comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate.”

The Post, in its article, noted the company’s official watermark appeared on the pages of the PowerPoint presentation, and that several included a page noting a “Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.” copyright.

Electronic security experts said the revelation of the PowerPoint presentations linking Huawei to state security wasn’t surprising, despite the company’s denials.

“Huawei has been closely linked to the security services from the start,” Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

Lewis said the warnings about the company have been coming from American officials since George W. Bush was president but had not been taken seriously until the past few years, when China became more aggressive about asserting itself on the world stage.

“What’s changed is the audience,” Lewis said. Between China’s and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s behavior, people are willing to hear now about the problems with Huawei in a way they weren’t before.”

Punishing sanctions

The United States has, for several years, been warning that Huawei represents a security risk to the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, U.S. officials say they believe the company has close ties to Chinese state security agencies and that its telecommunications products could be used to gather information on, or disrupt the activities of, China’s rivals.

Officials also point to a law in China that obligates private companies to cooperate with government agencies in the collection of data deemed important to state security.

In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. began aggressively moving against Huawei on a number of fronts.

The Trump administration fought against the company’s effort to market the networking equipment necessary to roll out 5G wireless technology. 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity and is expected to greatly enhance the ability of internet-connected devices to communicate, facilitating everything from self-driving vehicles to remote surgery.

The U.S. declared, among other things, it would cease sharing intelligence with allies who allow Huawei to supply critical pieces of their nations’ telecommunications infrastructure, arguing the company presented too much of a security risk.

As a result, a number of countries have barred the company’s technology from their 5G systems and others, including Britain, have begun the expensive process of removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.

Smartphone setback

Until recently, Huawei was one of the biggest sellers of smartphones in the world and enjoyed near-complete dominance in the Chinese market. Other sanctions levied against the company, however, have severely damaged that business.

The U.S. barred firms from licensing or selling the company technology critical to some of its products. That included Google, which in 2019 said it would no longer license its Android operating system — the world’s most popular — for use in new phones made by the company.

Intel and Qualcomm, two major makers of microchips, were banned from selling their most advanced technology to Huawei. The ban extended to contract chipmakers, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest.

The result has been a drastic decline in the sale of Huawei smartphones, both globally and within China.

“The core of their devices business was smartphones, and their market share has just continued to decline,” Ryan Reith, a vice president with International Data Corporation, told VOA.

Reith said the prospects for recovery do not look good for the company’s smartphone business.

“We don’t see any way that the brand itself turns around,” he said. “So, it’s probably on its way out.”
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The U.S. space agency NASA says its Parker Solar Probe this week became the first spacecraft to enter the Sun’s atmosphere, also known as the corona. 

The space agency announced the news Tuesday at a press conference during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. 

In a statement, NASA scientists said the probe actually entered the Sun’s corona April 18, but it took until now to get the data and examine it to confirm it had accomplished its mission. 

NASA said while the Sun doesn’t have a solid surface, it does have a superheated corona made of solar material bound to the Sun by gravity and magnetic forces. The point at which those forces are too weak to contain material ejected from the sun is considered the edge of the corona, an area scientists call the Alfvén critical surface. 

NASA says the Parker probe crossed this boundry about 13 million kilometers above the surface of the sun. Until they were able to examine the data from the probe, scientists were not exactly sure where the area was. 

The scientists say during the flyby, which lasted only a few hours, the solar probe passed into and out of the corona several times. The data it gathered in doing so proved what some had predicted — that the Alfvén critical surface isn’t shaped like a smooth ball, but has it has spikes and valleys that wrinkle the surface. 

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and was intended to exactly what it is doing: flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft has done before. NASA scientists compare what the probe has accomplished to landing on the moon. As the mission continues, the agency says, it will help scientists uncover critical information about Earth’s closest star and its influence on the solar system. 

A paper on the achievement was also published Tuesday in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
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China’s advances in quantum computing will give a new advantage to its armed forces, already the world’s third strongest, analysts say.

Quantum refers to a type of computing that lets high-powered machines make calculations that are too complex for ordinary devices. 

The concept discovered by American physicist Richard Feynman in 1980 has two key military uses, the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a 2019 paper. It can decrypt encoded messages and send cryptographic keys that intercept otherwise secure communication chains, the study says.

“I think the challenge is basically in the dual civilian-military strategy of China where the government will enlist the private sector into its military modernization program,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. “Also, the government of China spends a lot of money in research and development.”

China’s name surfaced last month when IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton said that within a decade Chinese “threat groups will likely collect data that enables quantum simulators to discover new economically valuable materials, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals.” 

China on the move

It’s unclear how far Chinese researchers have advanced quantum computing, but the Pentagon’s 2021 report to Congress on China says the Asian superpower “continues its pursuit of leadership in key technologies with significant military potential.”

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, an economic blueprint, prioritizes quantum technology among other new fields, the report to Congress adds, and it intends to install satellite-enabled, global “quantum-encrypted communications capability” by 2030.

Quantum could help detect submarines and stealth aircraft among other “military vehicles,” said Heather West, a senior research analyst with market research firm IDC in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Quantum computing can break “classical algorithms” to check on another country’s military, she told VOA.

The University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei last year made the first “definitive demonstration” of exploiting quantum mechanics for computations that would be “prohibitively slow on classical computers,” the science journal Nature reported. Google and NASA had claimed “quantum supremacy” in 2019. 

The state-run China Daily news website said in September the country had “achieved a series of breakthroughs in quantum technology including the world’s first quantum satellite, a 2,000-km quantum communication line between Beijing and Shanghai, and the world’s first optical quantum computing machine prototype.” China Daily did not mention military use.

China has alarmed other countries in the past by merging civilian and military infrastructure, part of a Military-Civil Fusion Development Strategy that makes it hard for the outside world to judge when academic research will become an asset of the People’s Liberation Army.

Although quantum computing worldwide remains at a “nascent stage,” multiple countries are in a race to develop it, Vuving said. He points to the United States, India, Japan and Germany, in addition to China. Any frontrunners are unlikely to last long, he said, as rivals would quickly copy their breakthroughs.

Multiple countries at risk?

The Booz Allen Hamilton report says many organization leaders and chief information security officers “lack insight into the practical importance of quantum computing and how to manage related risks.”

“They don’t know how and when the technology might become useful — and how it might shape the behavior of threat actors such as China, a persistent cyber adversary of government and commercial organizations globally and a major developer of quantum-computing technology,” the report says.

The People’s Liberation Army maintains the world’s third-strongest armed forces after the United States and Russia, according to the GlobalFirePower.com database. Japan, Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries fret particularly over the expansion of the PLA Navy in disputed tracts of sea. Washington has stepped up military movement in the same seas since 2019 to monitor China’s activities.

“Taiwan, the United States or the European Union are all likely targets for China to launch quantum computing attacks as long as countries do not have robust quantum cryptography to defend,” said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

China is already suspected of using cyberattacks against Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing says is part of its territory.

In the military realm outside China, quantum computing forms part of the AUKUS military technology sharing deal among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. announced in September over Beijing’s objections.

In August 2020, the White House, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced it would award $625 million over five years for quantum R&D, the National Defense Industrial Association says.

“We’re seeing a lot of research and development going into the Department of Defense in the U.S.,” West said. “I don’t think they would be pouring the money into it if they didn’t think there was that potential.”

Researchers in Singapore, a well-off city-state, and Taiwan, a world tech hub, are exploring quantum technology as well. 

Smaller countries couldn’t compete with China’s quantum computing resources, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. They would need engineers, technicians and money, he said.

“That’s for the big boys, for the people with money, sophistication, knowledge. Other countries could toy around, but they wouldn’t have the ability to go very far with it, I think,” Thayer said.

 
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday unveiled a White House plan to build 500,000 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, part of President Joe Biden’s goal of making the vehicles more accessible for both local and long-distance trips. 

Harris made the announcement during a ceremony at an EV charging facility in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, Washington.

“There can be no doubt: The future of transportation in our nation and around the world, is electric,” Harris said, adding that the nation’s ability to manufacture, charge and repair electric vehicles will help determine the health of U.S. communities, the strength of the nation’s economy and the sustainability of the planet. 

The EV Charging Plan takes $5 billion from the infrastructure law signed last month and allocates it to states to build a nationwide network of charging stations. The law also provides an additional $2.5 billion for local grants to support charging stations in rural areas and in disadvantaged communities. 

In a statement, the White House also announced it will establish on Tuesday a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, leveraging the resources from each of the departments to implement the EV charging network and other electrification provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

The White House says the goal of the plan is to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles for consumers and commercial fleets. They network as planned would reduce emissions and help meet the goal of net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.

Biden has established another ambitious goal of having electric vehicles account for 50% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030. Last year, industry experts said sales of fully electric vehicles accounted for about 2% of vehicles sold in the U.S. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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The United States, Australia and Japan said Sunday they will jointly fund the construction of an undersea cable to boost internet access in three tiny Pacific countries, as the Western allies seek to counter rising Chinese influence in the region.

The three Western allies said they would develop the cable to provide faster internet to Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia.

“This will support increased economic growth, drive development opportunities, and help to improve living standards as the region recovers from the severe impacts of COVID-19,” a joint statement from the United States, Japan and Australia said.

The three allies did not specify how much the project will cost.

The development of the undersea cable is the latest funding commitment from the Western allies in the telecommunications sector of the Pacific.

The United States and its Indo-Pacific allies are concerned that cables laid by the People’s Republic of China could compromise regional security. Beijing has denied any intent to use commercial fiber-optic cables, which have far greater data capacity than satellites, for spying.

Australia in 2017 spent about A$137 million ($98.2 million) to develop better internet access for the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. 
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A self-driving flying taxi. A super-fast land-based transport vehicle. A sustainable floating city.

Science fiction, or the wave of the future?

The “Futures” exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, open Nov. 20, 2021, through July 6, 2022, gives visitors a peek at what may happen in the years to come.

The exhibit opened as part of the 175th anniversary of the Smithsonian and is being held at the Arts and Industries Building, which reopened in November after being closed for almost two decades.

With more than 150 ideas, innovations, technologies and artifacts, the exhibit invites visitors to think about the kind of future in which they want to live.

It also provides food for thought by looking back to past innovations, like an 1800s experimental telephone and a spacesuit-testing android.

The exhibit was designed by the Lab of Rockwell Group, an architecture and exhibit design firm in New York.

“The exhibition opens up many different possible forms that the future can take, capturing a number of small glimpses of conceivable futures,” said David Tracy, director of creative technology at Rockwell.

The company designed cutting-edge installations called beacons that contain multiple- choice questions that “prompt people’s imaginations and get them to think about the kind of future they want to see,” Tracy told VOA. 

To answer the questions, people use hand gestures or hover over an answer, Tracy said, which also provides “health and safety measures, since you don’t have to touch a screen.”

Not surprisingly, there are more questions than answers.

It’s difficult for people “to imagine how the future may be different and the technologies that might make it different,” said Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California.

McGonigal provided the questions for visitors to ponder “to help them imagine the future more vividly and optimistically,” she said during an interview with VOA. 

Questions include, “When might moon tourism become a real reality?” Another looks at what the future might be like if meat doesn’t come from an animal but is grown in a laboratory. 

Visitor Raj Goel from New York got a taste of what that might be like as he peered into a display that was set up like a deli counter with possible food in the future. 

Goel said he’s concerned about meat being grown in a lab. But he said he liked the idea of mushrooms being used as a sort of meatless meat. 

“It’s supposed to taste like bacon and would be a lot healthier,” he said.

Goel said “Futures” makes him feel a bit like he’s walked into a science fiction movie.

“It’s like a giant arcade of futuristic toys and ideas,” he told VOA. 

Those ideas include a BioSuit, a skintight spacesuit that provides astronauts with greater mobility, and an environmentally friendly cleaning system that washes clothes using water from wetlands.

Human remains can also be put to good ecological use. 

A biodegradable underground burial capsule offers a sustainable way to use human remains to grow a tree.

With concern over climate change, cleaner transportation ideas are presented.

Among them, the Virgin Hyperloop, a futuristic transport tube that could become a new mode of train-like transportation and have “a lower environmental impact than other modes of mass transportation,” Virgin said on its hyperloop website. The system could propel passenger or cargo pods at speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers per hour, Virgin said, three times faster than high-speed rail. 

Another possible innovation is an autonomous flying machine. 

The Bell Nexus company has an idea for a flying taxi, especially for use in crowded cities. 

The air taxi, powered by hybrid-electric propulsion, resembles a helicopter and has six tilting round fans that enable it to take off and land vertically from a rooftop or a launch pad.

The interactive displays were especially popular with visitors. 

A robotic art installation called “Do Nothing with Al” mimics the slow moves of a person standing in front of it. The idea is to encourage people to slow down and relax in this era of technological overload.

“It’s really fascinating,” said Jan Myers from Denver. “It reminds me of a human torso with needles,” she said, as she moved back and forth, watching the robot follow her movements. 

At a portal called “Hi! How r u?” visitors can strike up holographic conversations by using an avatar to leave personal messages for people in the future. They can also interact in real time with people at a paired portal site in Doha, Qatar.

Tracy said he hoped the exhibit “empowered visitors with a sense of optimism about our future.” 

Goel said he was encouraged “because many things I saw here made me think the future is bright.” 

 
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As the two-day virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by President Joe Biden wrapped up on Friday, the U.S., Australia, Denmark and Norway announced an export control program to monitor and restrict the spread of technologies used to violate human rights.

“We focused on the need to empower human rights defenders” and ensure that technology “is used to advance democracies to lift people up, not to hold them down,” Biden said during his closing remarks.

The Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative seeks to address the problem of authoritarian governments misusing dual-use technologies to surveil and hack into the communications of political opponents, journalists, activists and minority communities.

The signees will work to develop a voluntary, written code of conduct intended to use human rights criteria to guide export licensing policy and practices, according to the White House.

The goal is to achieve a stronger agreement involving more governments to better control licenses for these technologies that can be used to violate human rights, said a senior administration official in a briefing to reporters.

“To make sure that these technologies are used for good and not for ill,” the official said.

These restrictions are needed, said Brett Bruen, director of global engagement during the Obama administration and president of the consulting firm Global Situation Room.

“If indeed democratic ideals or, at the very least, less violation of human rights norms is what we are going to require and expect from countries around the world, then there have to be some consequences,” he said.

The U.S. has taken action recently to put NSO, an Israeli company and maker of the Pegasus spyware, on a list of restricted companies. Pegasus was used to infect the smartphones of journalists and officials, essentially turning them into spying devices, allowing the user to read the targets’ messages and files, track their location, even turn on their cameras without their knowledge.

Initiative for Democratic Renewal

During the summit, leaders were encouraged to make pledges and commitments to bolster democracy and human rights.

For its part, the U.S. announced the establishment of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, a series of foreign assistance initiatives of up to $424.4 million in the coming year, subject to congressional approval.

The initiative includes funds to support independent media, strengthen anti-corruption efforts, empower reformers, labor unions and marginalized groups, and advance technology that supports democracy and defends free and fair elections.

Transparency International, a global civil society organization working in the fight against corruption, said the summit’s initial outcomes are promising, but more needs to be done.

“Other countries did not step up and commit to specific commitments the way the U.S. has, and so that is a concern,” Gary Kalman, director of Transparency International’s U.S. office, told VOA. “What are they actually going to come up with? They have a little bit more time; the U.S. government is giving them until January to come back with commitments.” 

But Bruen said $424.4 million would barely meet the needs of bolstering democracy globally and characterized it as “regifting.”

“These are initiatives and monies that have been allocated already, generally, for democracy, for the rule of law and human rights,” Bruen said. “They [the Biden administration] get to repurpose them for a new announcement but what we’re not seeing here are really substantial sums that are being put on the table.”

Democracy is also under attack by the global rise of populism, white supremacy and extremism, said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“Polarization is undermining democratic institutions. Science and reason are under siege,” Guterres said. “All of this is eroding trust between people and democratic leaders and institutions.”

An in-person summit is planned, a year from now.
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As the two-day virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by President Joe Biden wrapped up on Friday, the U.S., Australia, Denmark and Norway announced an export control program to monitor and restrict the spread of technologies used to violate human rights. The U.S. is also launching programs to support independent media and anti-corruption efforts and defend free and fair elections. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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A software vulnerability exploited in the online game Minecraft is rapidly emerging as a major threat to internet-connected devices around the world.

“The internet’s on fire right now,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. “People are scrambling to patch and there are … all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it.”

In the 12 hours since the bug’s existence was disclosed, he said Friday morning, it had been “fully weaponized,” meaning that malefactors have developed and distributed tools to exploit.

The flaw may be the worst computer vulnerability discovered in years. It opens a loophole in software code that is ubiquitous in cloud servers and enterprise software used across industry and government. It could allow criminals or spies to loot valuable data, plant malware or erase crucial information, and much more.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a company that’s not at risk,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Cloudflare, whose online infrastructure protects websites from malicious actors. Untold millions of servers have it installed, and experts said the fallout would not be known for several days.

Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable, called it “the single biggest, most critical vulnerability of the last decade” — and possibly the biggest in the history of modern computing.

The vulnerability, dubbed “Log4Shell,” was rated 10 on a scale of one to 10 by the Apache Software Foundation, which oversees development of the software. Anyone with the exploit can obtain full access to an unpatched computer that uses the software.

New Zealand’s computer emergency response team was among the first to report that the flaw was being “actively exploited in the wild” just hours after it was publicly reported Thursday and a patch released.

The vulnerability, in open-source Apache software used to run websites and other web services, was discovered Nov. 24 by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, the foundation said.

Finding and patching the software could be a complicated task. While most organizations and cloud providers should be able to update their web servers easily, the same Apache software is also often embedded in third-party programs, which often can only be updated by their owners.

Yoran, of Tenable, said organizations need to presume they’ve been compromised and act quickly.

The flaw’s exploitation was apparently first discovered in Minecraft, an online game hugely popular with kids and owned by Microsoft.

Meyers and security expert Marcus Hutchins said Minecraft users had been using it to execute programs on the computers of other users by pasting a short message in a chat box.

Microsoft said it had issued a software update for Minecraft users. “Customers who apply the fix are protected,” it said.

Researchers reported finding evidence the vulnerability could be exploited in servers run by companies such as Apple, Amazon, Twitter and Cloudflare.

Cloudflare’s Sullivan said there we no indication his company’s servers had been compromised. Apple, Amazon and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
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Robotic vacuum cleaners halted in their tracks. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies were interrupted, and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news.

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms. 

How did it happen? 

Amazon has said nothing about exactly what went wrong. The company limited its communications Tuesday to terse technical explanations on an Amazon Web Services dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had affected Amazon’s own warehouse and delivery operations but said the company was “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.” It didn’t immediately respond to further questions Wednesday. 

The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon’s own massive e-commerce operation. 

What is AWS? 

Amazon Web Services is a cloud-service operation — it stores its customers’ data, runs their online activities and more — and a huge profit center for Amazon. It holds roughly a third of the $152 billion market for cloud services, according to a report by Synergy Research Group — a larger share than its closest rivals, Microsoft and Google, combined. 

It was formerly run by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in July. 

Too many eggs in one basket? 

Some cybersecurity experts have warned for years about the potentially ugly consequences of allowing a handful of big tech companies to dominate key internet operations. 

“The latest AWS outage is a prime example of the danger of centralized network infrastructure,” said Sean O’Brien, a visiting lecturer in cybersecurity at Yale Law School. “Though most people browsing the internet or using an app don’t know it, Amazon is baked into most of the apps and websites they use each day.” O’Brien said it’s important to build a new network model that resembles the peer-to-peer roots of the early internet. Big outages have already knocked huge swaths of the world offline, as happened during an October Facebook incident.

Even under the current model, companies do have some options to split their services between different cloud providers, although it can be complicated, or to at least make sure they can move their services to a different region run by the same provider. Tuesday’s outage mostly affected Amazon’s “US East 1” region. 

“Which means if you had critical systems only available in that region, you were in trouble,” said Servaas Verbiest, lead cloud evangelist at Sungard Availability Services. “If you heavily embraced the AWS ecosystem and are locked into using solely their services and functions, you must ensure you balance your workloads between regions.” 

Hasn’t this happened before? 

Yes. The last major AWS outage was in November 2020. There have been numerous other disruptive and lengthy internet outages involving other providers. In June, the behind-the-scenes content distributor Fastly suffered a failure that briefly took down dozens of major internet sites including those of CNN and The New York Times, plus the British government home page. Another that month affected provider Akamai during peak business hours in Asia in June.

In the October outage, Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — blamed a “faulty configuration change” for an hourslong worldwide outage that took down Instagram and WhatsApp in addition to its titular platform. 

What about the government? 

It was unclear how, or whether, Tuesday’s outage affected governments, but many of them also rely on Amazon and its rivals. 

Among the most influential organizations to rethink its approach of depending on a single cloud provider was the Pentagon, which in July canceled a disputed cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 billion. It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers such as Google, Oracle and IBM. 

The National Security Agency earlier this year awarded Amazon a contract with a potential estimated value of $10 billion to be the sole manager of the NSA’s own migration to cloud computing. The contract is known by its agency code name “Wild and Stormy.” The General Accountability Office in October sustained a bid protest by Microsoft, finding that certain parts of the NSA’s decision were “unreasonable,” although the full decision is classified. 
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While the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, one might not know it by looking at 2021’s most searched items on Google. 

According to the list released by Google Wednesday, “NBA” was the most searched term in the U.S., but it’s unclear why. 

Other most searched topics were rapper DMX, who died; Gabby Petito, an apparent murder victim who died during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was also on the most searched list. Laundrie was declared a person of interest in Petito’s death, but he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Also on the list is Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted last month of killing two protesters and wounding a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. 

The most searched news item was “mega millions” as people were curious about record-sized lottery jackpots. 

The most searched person was Kyle Rittenhouse, the most searched actor was Alec Baldwin, who was involved in a shooting death on a movie set, and the most searched athlete was Tiger Woods, who was severely injured in a car accident earlier in the year, Google said. 

The most searched movie was Black Widow, and the most searched musician/band was rapper Travis Scott. Scott was recently the subject of interest as 10 people were killed and hundreds more wounded at one of his concerts in November. 

While 2020 searches were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it barely registered on this year’s list. “COVID vaccine near me” was the most popular “near me” search, with “COVID testing near me” coming in at number two.
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A major outage disrupted Amazon’s cloud services on Tuesday, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps, and Amazon.com Inc.’s e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas. 

“Many services have already recovered; however, we are working towards full recovery across services,” Amazon said on its status dashboard. 

Amazon’s Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported issues, according to their social media pages. 

Trading app Robinhood and Walt Disney’s streaming service Disney+ and Netflix were also down, according to Downdetector.com. 

“Netflix, which runs nearly all of its infrastructure on AWS, appears to have lost 26% of its traffic,” said Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at analytics firm Kentik. 

Amazon said the outage was related to network devices and linked to application programming interface, or API, which is a set of protocols for building and integrating application software. 

Downdetector.com showed more than 24,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Amazon, including Prime Video and other services. The outage tracking website collates status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors, on its platform. 

Users began reporting issues around 10:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday, and the outage might have affected a larger number of users. 

Amazon has experienced 27 outages over the past 12 months related to its services, according to web tool-reviewing website ToolTester. 

In June, websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and The New York Times were hit by a widespread hourlong outage linked to U.S.-based content delivery network provider Fastly Inc., a smaller rival of AWS.

 
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