Stratechery Resiliency and Scale
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Oct 22, 2025 Explore the interconnected themes of resiliency and scale in the digital world. A DNS issue highlights how one regional problem can disrupt the entire internet. Discover why Northern Virginia became a data hub and how AWS's scale shifted cloud economics towards centralization. Examine the implications of globalization on manufacturing and why jobs might not follow retraining initiatives. Finally, delve into the costs of restoring resiliency in supply chains and technology after the disruptions caused by COVID and ownership changes in social media.
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Resiliency Eroded By Scale And Inertia
- The internet's theoretical resiliency has been undermined by scale and inertia concentrated in hubs like AWS U.S. East 1.
- Centralizing where developers deploy made a single-region failure feel like the internet itself broke.
How Northern Virginia Became Data-Center Central
- Northern Virginia became the default data-center region because of cheap power, land, and early internet exchange points.
- AWS placed its first data center there in 2006, and U.S. East 1 grew into the biggest, cheapest region developers defaulted to.
Defaults Turn Cheap Options Into Single Points
- AWS profitability and feature-first deployment concentrated capacity in U.S. East 1, making it the cheapest and default choice.
- Defaults in tutorials and templates amplified that concentration and reduced real-world resiliency.
