TLDR Tech / InfoSec
Shutdowns, power outages, and conflict: a review of Q1 2026 Internet disruptions
Cloudflare Radar's Q1 2026 review documented prolonged government-directed blackouts in Uganda (January 13-26, around the Museveni election) and Iran (two nationwide shutdowns starting January 8 and February 28, the latter still largely in place via whitelisting and "white SIM" filtering rather than route withdrawals), alongside a Republic of Congo election shutdown on March 15. Drone strikes physically damaged AWS data centers in the me-central-1 (UAE) and me-south-1 (Bahrain) regions on March 1-2 and again on March 23, causing elevated origin connection failures and prompting Amazon to advise customers to migrate workloads or back up data, while Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure cut connectivity in Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv by ~50%. Cuba's national grid collapsed three times in March (March 4, 16, and between 21 and 22, with traffic dropping up to 77%), and additional disruptions hit Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, the US Virgin Islands, Portugal (Storm Kristin), the WACS submarine cable serving Congo, Verizon Wireless, Orange Guinée, and TalkTalk.
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