I'm sorry, but if you're naive enough to think governments/TLAs don't already have kill switches implemented at the basic level, call me. I have a bridge to sell.
BTW, everything runs on electricity, there's nothing easier thant cutting the cord.
OpenInfra General Manager talks sovereignty, governments deploying tech 'kill switches'
Sovereignty was a big topic was at last week's Kubecon, and Thierry Carrez, the General Manager of the OpenInfra Foundation, shared strong feelings around it that included raising the idea that tech companies might be forced by their countries' governments to deploy "kill switches." Even though Kubecon might almost be called …
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Tuesday 7th April 2026 12:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Another Puzzled Old Person Here.........................
Before the internet became pervasive, companies paid people like AT&T to connect their sites using a "private" T1 network.
In this world, AT&T would be INSANE to offer clients a service with "kill switches".
You could connect to T1 locally......and pay AT&T to backhaul to another POP so that you had a network backup.
This sounds like a reasonable way of doing business.
........until we get EVERYONE using the internet.....because it is cheap..........and probably has "kill switches" located in Washington DC!!!
Oh.....and then there's "the cloud"......................
Where Google (or M$ or ORACLE or Amazon) can "kill" your cloud any time they like!!
So......tell me that the old ways were not the best ways!!!
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Tuesday 7th April 2026 13:53 GMT doublelayer
Re: Another Puzzled Old Person Here.........................
Those ways are not quite as different as you describe. I don't think there are internet kill switches in Washington, but if there are, why wouldn't they have had them on private lines? Did they suddenly become interested in the ability to take things down in 1995? That's especially true because a kill switch on the internet or big chunks of it would cause a lot more damage than individual ones on private lines, so if they wanted the ability to target individual things rather than black out communications altogether, the private lines were the easier things to mess with.
The old ways are the best ways if you need to and are in a position to operate your systems as if you're going to face deliberate attack trying to take you down and you need to survive that. If that's your situation, then you do want private buildings with your servers and a private line connecting them on private land you own and patrol with private security guards and anti-aircraft weapons. Since almost nobody non-military has all those things, you would make do with the subset you can have. For many others, they don't expect that a government's going to aim to take them out and, if they are, they won't withstand it. If my country's government wants my employer's network to go down, they don't need to try to break the internet or strong-arm the cloud providers when they could march some police into the office and order us to turn things off, so hardening our infrastructure to withstand something we don't expect and can't survive is not a logical argument for doing so.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 08:07 GMT Paul Crawford
Re: Another Puzzled Old Person Here.........................
The real risk is not your own gov having a kill switch on your equipment/infrastructure as they already have simple legal methods to exert control, but another government having it. Especially if they are ruled by the mandarin candidate.
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