Russia was not harmed: thanks to sanctions
Many billions of dollars is now the most common preliminary estimate of the damage caused to the world's infrastructure by the global failure of Microsoft. Ultimately, losses for airports, banks, healthcare systems, telecom operators and other services could amount to tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions. As Bloomberg notes, this emergency has led to “incredibly broad” consequences, covering territories from Australia, India and Singapore to the United States and Europe. It bypassed Russia — for obvious reasons.
Airports, already overloaded in the summer, were the first to suffer. Thousands of flights have been canceled in different countries; in the United States, the world's largest air carrier, United Airlines Holdings, as well as Delta Air Lines and American Airlines have suspended operations.
Wild queues at the airports of Sydney and Melbourne, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Delhi, paralyzed payment systems and Windows computers, frozen websites, the inability to check in for a flight — all this was the result of an error in the software update of CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity company. Due to a computer failure, the London Stock Exchange suspended trading, in Japan McDonald's closed a third of its restaurants due to broken cash registers… And so on.
Russia has avoided problems amid this planetary collapse: CrowdStrike is not present here and Microsoft software has been officially blocked. Since the fall of 2023, the American company has not renewed licenses for Russian corporate users. Our airports have replaced foreign software with domestic ones.
“The situation with Microsoft once again shows the importance of import substitution of foreign software, primarily at critical information infrastructure facilities,” said the Ministry of Digital Development.
“This major failure of IT systems, as Elon Musk described it, is a clear manifestation of the risks of globalization,” says Maxim Osadchiy, head of the analytical department of BKF Bank. — It almost didn’t affect Russia. Sanctions “saved” our country: in March of this year, Microsoft announced that it would be disconnected from its cloud services. So far, it is known that only some clients of T-Bank (formerly Tinkoff) experienced difficulties when making transfers and payments. As for the rest of the world, the main loser turned out to be the direct culprit of the “computer apocalypse” — CrowdStrike Holdings, whose shares fell by 8.6% during the day. The company faces multibillion-dollar lawsuits. At the same time, shares of Microsoft Corporation sank by only 0.4%.”
High-tech companies were also among the hardest hit. In particular, Tesla, Inc. shares. (TSLA) decreased by 3%, notes Osadchiy.
“Of course, the amount of total damage cannot yet be determined even approximately: it is only clear that we are talking about a colossal amount,” says Oleg Panteleev, head of the analytical service of the AviaPort agency. – It is unclear how long it will be before airport services return to their normal operating hours. It is also unclear whether consumers, represented by passengers and shippers, will file claims for monetary compensation against airlines, which, in general, are not to blame for the incident. The failure affected not only the airline industry, but also banking and many other areas. It seems that software manufacturer CrowdStrike is no longer a survivor in the IT market: it is the company that will bear the brunt of financial claims. However, the final amount of losses in dollar terms may turn out to be so huge that the company’s assets will certainly not be enough to satisfy these claims.”
As for Russia, its air carriers no longer operate flights to Europe and the USA, but Westerners, in turn, come to us. Software products from Microsoft are hardly used in the country, not to mention CrowdStrike software. So there is no need to talk about risks, even potential ones (such as cancellations and delays of flights), Panteleev sums up.