Claude went offline twice in 24 hours after US labeled Anthropic as a supply risk, here’s what went wrong
The cloud went offline twice within 24 hours after the US government labeled Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” and forced all federal agencies to immediately stop using the chatbot.
Anthropic’s cloud AI model reported its second global outage in 24 hours on March 3, preventing users from accessing its tools and services around the world. Anthropic’s cloud status page confirmed the outage, classifying it as an “advanced error” that affected both cloud AI chatbots as well as more specialized and non-specific tools like Cowork, which recently hit the news and went viral for crashing SaaS stocks, sparking fear and concerns that put many IT companies like Infosys and TCS on notice.
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Update: Anthropic’s cloud status page states that the company has implemented a solution. “A solution has been implemented and we are monitoring the results,” the update said.
According to DownDetector, a website that tracks these outrages, more than 300 people reported they couldn’t access the cloud. At the time of writing the outage has not been fully resolved, with the cloud status page still showing, “We are currently investigating the issue.” Anthropic has not disclosed the exact reasons for the cloud going offline twice in 24 hours, however based on recent developments, it is safe to assume that increased usage could be a possible reason why the cloud went down for users globally.
Anthropic found itself in the middle of a national controversy after Anthropic saw a large increase in cloud usage after it refused to give the US military unrestricted access to cloud AI, after which it was labeled a “supply chain risk” and all federal agencies were banned from using the cloud. But while all this was happening, OpenAI quickly stepped in and signed a deal with the Pentagon, with its head Sam Altman saying the move was hasty and at least on the surface may seem opportunistic, leading to a mass migration of ChatGept users to the cloud. Downloads of the cloud skyrocketed as a result, making it the number one app on Apple’s App Store over the weekend. Meanwhile, calls for boycott/cancellation of ChatGPT grew louder on social media.
Why did the cloud go offline?
Although there is no official statement on the reason behind the cloud outage, the ongoing conflict in Iran may also have played a significant role in it. Iran attacked three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the Middle East – two in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain, disrupting AWS services. Amazon is Anthropic’s primary cloud service provider and training partner. However, there has been no official statement linking these two incidents.
Social media reactions to cloud outage
Users on social media quickly reacted to the outage, referencing Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon. The official account of research firm Citrini wrote, “Did the US government bomb Anthropic?”
The conspiracy theories didn’t stop there. Another user posted, “Last week: The President banned all federal use of the Anthropic Cloud. Today: The cloud is down for irregular periods of time.”
However, some users also jokingly said that due to the AI model being down, they may have to start coding manually again. One person shared a video of an orangutan trying to chop wood and wrote, “How it feels to manually code after the demise of the cloud.”
