Re: a brief pondering

[Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]>]

Narelle Clark wrote on 22/03/2020 04:06:
> We can keep the internet running. That's what I'm being told to do!!

this is going to become an increasingly interesting proposition now that 
factories have been told to shut down:

> https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-closes-all-nonessential-factories-to-halt-spread-of-coronavirus-giuseppe-conte/

> "We decided to take a further step. The government decided to close
> on the whole national territory all productive activities which are
> not strictly necessary, crucial, indispensable to ensure essential
> goods and services," Conte said.
... and data centres have begun to block customers from entry:

> https://www.equinix.com/lp/equinix-coronavirus-statement-to-customers-and-partners/

> All IBX facilities are operational at this time. IBX locations in
> France, Germany, Italy and Spain are under restricted access,
> effective Monday, March 23 at 8:00am CET until further notice,
> meaning visitors, customers, customer contractors and non-critical
> Equinix vendors will not be permitted to enter the IBX facilities.

("IBX" is marketing nonsense for "data centre")

This is going to great, until we end up with a train crash.

Is a WDM components manufacturer strictly necessary, or crucial or 
indispensible?  What about the screw fitting manufacturer that they 
depend on? Or the plastics production manufacturer for the equipment 
casing or packaging?  Or the tyre sales shop for when the delivery van 
has a puncture?

What happens when one bit of the supply chain fails and all of a sudden 
you have major kit failure and then a large geographic area loses 
connectivity, and the medical referral and treatment system falls over 
because they depended on communications which was supposed to work?

Society is now actively threatening the supply of nails and this is 
putting us at risk of losing the kingdom.

There is an extraordinarily complex supply chain interdependency for 
almost everything, ranging from food to medical supplies to 
communications. You can't arbitrarily block or close down bits of this 
and expect other parts to work, any more than you can expect to remove 
large chunks out of a jenga pile and expect it not to break, badly.

Nick