Bangladesh, Nov. 18 -- A significant technical failure at Cloudflare, one of the worlds most critical internet infrastructure providers, briefly plunged portions of the global internet into chaos on November 18. Major platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, and even Downdetector-the very tool people rely on to check whether a website is down-were disrupted as Cloudflare grappled with what it later described as an internal service degradation triggered by a surge in “unusual traffic.”

While the issue was resolved within hours, the incident served as yet another reminder of the fragility of the modern internet and the enormous influence wielded by just a handful of infrastructure companies.

Shortly before n...