The internet war is here

The internet war, data centres, satellites and the Fight to Control the Digital World

The warning signs are no longer confined to cyberspace. Data centres have been hit by drones. Satellite links have become a battlefield dependency. Governments are shutting down mobile networks. And a power failure in a London cloud region has disrupted services used by banks and millions of customers. These events do not prove one coordinated global attack. Together, they reveal a new kind of conflict: a struggle over who controls the infrastructure the modern world runs on.

On 20 October, a power event at Google Cloud’s London region disrupted online services across the UK and Europe. Revolut customers faced problems with payments and account access; other banks and public services were affected too. Reports also pointed to disruption at OpenAI. There is no evidence that this was a cyberattack. Google’s reported cause was a power-related incident. But the outage showed how a local failure inside one major cloud region can spread through services far beyond that building.

That is the first part of the story: concentration creates leverage. Banks, government services, businesses and AI platforms may appear separate to their users, yet many rely on a small number of companies that provide the computing, storage and networks beneath them. When those foundations fail, customers can lose access to essential services without their own systems being directly attacked.

The second part is already visible in war. In October, Ukrainian strikes hit several data centres operated by Yandex, Russia’s largest technology company. The attacks disrupted services used for payments, transport, email, food delivery and cloud computing. Russian strikes have also damaged data centres and other digital infrastructure in Ukraine. The data centre is no longer simply a place where information sits. It can be a strategic target because so much civilian and military activity depends on the computing power inside it.

This is not a new concern in theory. It is becoming a reality on the ground. In March, Iranian strikes targeted Amazon Web Services data centres in the Gulf, in the first documented military operation against commercial data centres, according to the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. The consequences reach beyond the damaged facilities: commercial clouds can support civilian services and military capabilities at the same time, creating risks for people who depend on the same infrastructure.

The third part is control of the connection itself. Ukraine’s military has relied on Starlink and Starshield for communications in areas where conventional networks have been damaged or are unavailable. Recent restrictions and disruptions reportedly affected Ukrainian communications and drone operations. The episode exposed a serious question for governments everywhere: what happens when a military depends on a service it does not own and cannot ultimately control?

Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly restricted mobile internet access, saying the shutdowns help defend against Ukrainian drones. The outages have also disrupted banking, navigation, taxi services and deliveries, pushing some organisations back towards landline phones. In this case, connectivity is not being lost because a server was destroyed; access is being limited by state decision. The result is still a contest over who gets to communicate, where and when.

Put the pieces together and the emerging “internet war” is bigger than hacking. It includes attacks on physical infrastructure, state control over networks, dependence on privately operated satellites, and the concentration of cloud computing and AI capacity in a handful of companies. The internet’s apparent weightlessness hides a very physical system: buildings, power supplies, cooling equipment, fibre routes, satellites and ground stations.

That is the new front line: not only the data moving across the internet, but the infrastructure that makes the data move.

The distinction matters. Today’s Google Cloud outage has not been linked to the Russia–Ukraine war or to a coordinated operation. Nor do the separate conflicts and restrictions prove that a single worldwide campaign is under way. But the pattern is real: governments and armed forces increasingly see digital infrastructure as a source of power, a vulnerability to exploit, and a resource to deny an opponent.

The next major disruption may not begin with a mysterious message on a screen. It could start with a damaged data centre, a cut network link, a power failure, a satellite restriction—or a government switch turned off. And the consequences may appear in places that seem far removed from the conflict: at a bank counter, in a hospital system, on a delivery app or inside an AI service.

The internet was built to connect the world. In an age of cloud dependence, AI and drone warfare, that connectivity has become strategic terrain. The battle for it has begun.