AWS Goes AWOL: Are we Too Dependent on the Cloud?

Oct 20, 2025

David Meier, a tech and investing commentator, discusses the recent AWS outage and its widespread impact on companies like Lyft and Robinhood. He explains the technical failures behind the disruption and debates whether businesses are too reliant on cloud infrastructure, especially with AI services. The conversation delves into risk assessment for cloud-dependent firms, and they engage in a fun game evaluating companies as either 'fakers' or 'breakers' in light of the outage.

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INSIGHT

Complex Systems Invite Cascading Failures

Complex cloud systems make outages inevitable because small failures can cascade quickly.
Tom King says such compound failures are almost unavoidable in large distributed systems.

INSIGHT

Scale Makes Reliability Remarkable

AWS's scale and reliability are engineering marvels despite occasional outages.
David Meier notes he's surprised these outages don't happen more often given the system size.

INSIGHT

DNS Failures Can Freeze The Internet

The outage tied to DynamoDB and DNS issues can effectively halt services by breaking name-to-IP resolution.
Tim Beyers explains DNS failures act like losing your phone contacts so internet services stop functioning.

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AWS goes down again. Is it time to re-assess risk in the cloud and AI-era, where so much of the digital assistance we get is housed someplace we can’t see and controlled by someone we don’t know?

David Meier, Tom King, and Tim Beyers:

- Discuss the failures that led to the AWS outage this morning and which companies are services were impacted as a result.

- Debate whether companies have become too dependent on AWS and its peers, especially when virtually all the in-demand AI services we’re banking on are hosted in these clouds.

- Play another game of Faker or Breaker with three companies impacted by the AWS outage.

Don’t wait! Be sure to get to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of David’s Gardner’s new book — Rule Breaker Investing: How to Pick the Best Stocks of the Future and Build Lasting Wealth. It’s on shelves now; get it before it’s gone!

Companies discussed: AMZN, LYFT, UBER, HOOD, COIN, RBLX

Host: Tim Beyers

Guests: David Meier, Tom King

Producer: Anand Chokkavelu

Engineer: Dan Boyd

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