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A Technological Wake-Up Call

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A Technological Wake-Up Call
Travelers wait for delayed flights beneath a monitor displaying a blue error screen, also known as the “Blue Screen of Death,” inside Terminal C in Newark International Airport, after United Airlines and other airlines grounded flights due to a worldwide tech outage caused by an update to Crowdstrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software which crashed Microsoft Windows systems, in Newark, N.J., on July 19, 2024. Bing Guan/Reuters
Jeffrey A. Tucker
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Commentary

This past week, one tiny mistake in the code of a single third-party provider, one designed to secure software, was released without proper staging. Over the course of hours that turned to days, vast swaths of the civilized world stopped working. Flights were grounded. Deliveries stopped. Bank software collapsed. Security systems froze. Even many electronic doors stopped working. All over the world.

Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Author
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of “The Best of Ludwig von Mises.” He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. He can be reached at [email protected]
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