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Cloudflare’s Global Outage, Executive Stock Sale, and a Digital Conflict We’re Not Ready to Admit

Cloudflare’s Global Outage, Executive Stock Sale, and a Digital Conflict We’re Not Ready to Admit

Over the last few weeks, something unusual — and increasingly concerning — has been happening across the global cloud and edge ecosystem. The Cloudflare outage wasn’t an isolated technical issue. It was another event in a sequence that has been forming a clear pattern.

What makes this incident even more interesting is the timing:
Just one day before the outage, Cloudflare’s Senior VP of Engineering, Carl S. Ledbetter, sold $3.1 million in stock under a 10b5-1 plan.
Legally acceptable? Yes.
But in context, the timing raises legitimate questions.

Before looking at the broader implications, I want to revisit the core ideas I’ve been writing about for weeks.

1. The Strategic Context I’ve Been Warning About

In recent articles, I outlined a framework describing what I believe is happening in the global digital landscape:

(a) The world is entering a phase of digital conflict

Nation-states are using the cloud as a pressure point.

(b) DDoS, DNS, and cloud infrastructure are becoming geopolitical vectors

You no longer need to break physical infrastructure to cause disruption.
Disabling DNS or saturating edge networks can instantly stop companies.

(c) Our dependence on a small number of providers creates systemic vulnerability

AWS, Cloudflare, Azure, and Google have become single points of failure for the modern world.

(d) The most significant risk is not the attack itself, but the reactive decisions companies make under pressure

Reduced protections, disabled mitigations, and emergency configuration changes often make things worse.

These ideas were detailed here:

Looking back now, the events that followed seem to validate these points far more quickly than I expected.

2. What Actually Happened: A Sequence That’s Hard to Ignore

AWS

A global disruption tied to DNS instability
— again, centered around us-east-1.

Azure

A global outage days later involving DNS + Front Door/Edge, same pattern, same symptoms.

Cloudflare

A worldwide failure affecting X, Discord, ChatGPT, gaming platforms, and several high-availability systems.
Cloudflare’s own explanation included an interesting phrase:
“unexpected traffic patterns”
alongside a “configuration change”.

Those two concepts rarely appear together unless something external amplifies the impact.

This isn’t about blaming anyone.
It’s about recognizing when unrelated events begin to look very similar.

3. My View as Someone Focused on Infrastructure and Security

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but I do think in patterns.
And what we’re seeing checks too many technical boxes to be dismissed as a coincidence.

Across different providers:

  • The same layers were affected (DNS, edge, APIs, network)

  • The same symptoms appeared

  • within a very short time window

  • while global hostile traffic metrics were rising

  • and while Cloudflare’s own reports showed a surge in automated attacks

From an infrastructure perspective, this deserves deeper scrutiny.

In Cloudflare’s case specifically:

  • The impact was global

  • The disruption was sudden

  • Traffic anomalies were acknowledged

  • and services with massive redundancy still dropped

Whether the root cause was internal, external or a combination of both, everything about this event fits what I’ve been warning about:
A digital environment under increasing pressure.

And the timing of the stock sale by a senior engineering executive — just hours before the outage — is, at minimum, noteworthy.

Coincidences do happen.
But when several major cloud providers fail in the same way, within days of each other, and under rising global tension, the probability shifts.

4. The Most Overlooked Detail in Cloudflare’s Statement

Cloudflare stated:

  • a configuration issue

  • and “unusual traffic”

Internally generated errors don’t create unusual traffic.
External triggers do.

This doesn’t confirm an attack, but it does suggest that the environment around the configuration change was not typical.
If we’ve learned anything from large-scale internet incidents, it’s that:

When providers mention traffic anomalies, something more complex was unfolding.

5. The Bigger Question: Coincidence or Pattern?

Let’s line up the facts again:

  • AWS outage → DNS

  • Azure outage → DNS + Edge

  • Cloudflare outage → traffic anomalies + config failure

  • All within 10 days

  • Global surge in DDoS, botnets, and hostile automation

  • Escalating geopolitical digital capabilities in 2025

  • The Cloudflare outage is impacting services that rarely go down

  • A senior engineering executive selling millions in stock 24 hours before the event

Can it all be a coincidence?

Yes.

Is that the most convincing explanation?

In my view, no.

Especially when these events align so closely with the vulnerabilities I’ve been describing for weeks.

6. What Comes Next

Major outages rarely happen once.
When the ecosystem is this unstable, a second event tends to follow.

I expect Cloudflare to release a post-incident report, but I’m not confident it will reveal the whole picture.
Large providers — understandably — limit how much operational detail becomes public.

Regardless of what the report says, the reputational impact is already underway, and the market will likely respond.

More importantly, companies relying on these providers should assume that the pressure on global internet infrastructure is far from over.

We may be heading toward a second act.

And the last few weeks were just the opening scene.

Glaycon Ferreira

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