Opinion | Blue Screen Blues: Microsoft Triggered Cyber Meltdown and the Case for Atmanirbharta

The champions of Atmanirbhar Bharat, isolationists among conservatives and the malcontents of globalisation are having a “told you so moment." The Microsoft outage has given all of them a chance to have a right royal moan about the perils of blind belief in the overarching credo of the liberal world order: that international post-World War II system characterised, at least in one context, by the encouragement of global trade, economic interdependence, and multi-lateral agreements.

And it’s not hard to see why. Look at the mayhem caused by a single rogue file called c-00000291*.sys. This teeny-weeny alpha-numeric code in a single content update virtually fried the dendrites of the Microsoft Operating System that literally turned blue – the pallor of death.

Questions abound: did the firm tasked by Microsoft to ward off viruses and malware itself violate zealously adhered to software testing and development guidelines? Software updates are stringently tested at many levels before they are rolled out globally. The fact that this one slipped past shows that the checks and balances aren’t as foolproof as they ought to be.

The descent into defective code-induced dysfunction triggered global mayhem. The cost to businesses and economies could run into billions of dollars. This disruption was because of negligence, what if the next cyber pandemic is because of malevolence?

No country except autarkies like China, Russia and North Korea, and the less technologically leveraged in the Global South, were spared. But because India is a paid-up member of the globalised, rules-based world order, it was strongly buffeted.

Indeed, in a less connected world, a freak outage such as this would have had less impact. But that a single misplaced bit of computer code could bring nations to their knees reveals just how uncritically accepting we continue to be of “globalisation" as a project for the advancement of the human race. One would have imagined that we would have been less credulous by now, three years after a single sneeze triggered a global pandemic that stilled the globe and our lives. But clearly, some lessons are hard learnt.

While no one needs to take the sledgehammer to globalisation, it is becoming obvious that there is a need to minimise risks. Perhaps, as a first step, by improving vigilance and incorporating redundancies throughout the global supply chain. This imperative of building self-reliance, however, will only gain ground when any prospective autopsy of the costs of globalisation is freed from politics.

As of today, any inquiry into the status quo is dismissed by the Left as a “right-wing" lurch towards protectionism, spawned by a crude inward-looking parochialism.

In India, examples abound. A certain section of the political class and commentariat mocked Prime Minister Modi for being blinded by exclusivism for deciding against joining an influential trading bloc like the RCEP. The decision, as it turned out, was the right one. Thailand joined the RCEP but in the last 18 months, its GDP growth has slumped to 2.7 per cent. This is largely due to trade imbalances after the RCEP’s lead member, China, dumped goods, wantonly taking advantage of favourable tariff rates that its economic heft allowed it to impose across the RCEP.

Of course, the stigmatisation of Atmanirbharta is not only confined to trade-related policies but also foreign policy. Modi’s “keep all options open" policy-driven engagement with Russia was the subject of scorn just a few weeks ago. Global interconnectedness has brought many benefits to many people. But the prohibitive costs of its many misses have brought ruin upon millions too.

At what point will the costs of inter-connectedness outweigh their benefits? Or are we already beyond the tipping point?

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

At what point will the costs of inter-connectedness outweigh their benefits? Or are we already beyond the tipping point?

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.