I came across this image during the previous Cloudflare outage on Nov 18 (vs the one on Dec 5). It is priceless... (my favorite part is the angry bird)

Not sure about the source (maybe this?), but it is a reference to this classic xkcd comic. (One of the key rules of IT I have learned is that there is always a relevant xkcd comic. 😄)

This Internet was created in the 1960s as a decentralized network with no single central hub, so that it can recover even if its major nodes are bombed. We have gone a long way and we are building our infrastructure as a monoculture, where we ultimately rely on a few critical 'things'. The 2020 xkcd comic was about our tech stack / software supply chain, while this rework tells me how 'all modern infrastructure' is based on a few service providers for infrastructure / security. These companies may have a decentralized system, but a single angry bird going through their ci/cd pipeline can put half the world to a halt. Still surprisingly accurate..

This post was first published on Linkedin here on 2025-12-06.