CrowdStrike Outage - Chaos in the Code and Cosmos

Can one line of code really bring the world to its knees? It can if it has a little help from some cosmic friends!

Jul 22, 2024

NOTE: This piece was written prior to President Biden announcing he is ending his reelection campaign. We realize that the collective focus is currently on that event, as it should be. However, the CrowdStrike outage is also an important (and surprisingly related) event that still bears further scrutiny. We hope you will read on to see why.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

On Friday, the world woke up to headlines about a massive IT outage causing unprecedented chaos. CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, reported that customers around the world who use their Falcon platform began experiencing problems around 3:00pm EDT on July 18, 2024. These problems included the dreaded BSOD - “Blue Screen of Death” (Dun-dun-DUN!!!)

Clueless, Careless, or Criminal?

Initially, it was uncertain whether this was due to a hack, malware, or other form of cybercrime, but many assumed the worst as the impact continued to grow, grinding several industries to a halt. Financial institutions, emergency services, hospitals, television and radio broadcasts, some retail, and even delivery services were stuck. Among the worst affected were railways and airlines (except for Southwest with their dusty OG Windows 3.1 - respect).

CrowdStrike then announced that this outage was the result of a bad line of code in a recent update. CUE: *sigh of relief* It was not a cyberattack. While it’s great to know this is not the work of a cybercriminal Black Hat, but instead a cyberdoofus asshat, you may still wonder how a single line of code can crash millions of computers.

Alarming news headlines surround a man looking concerned, Text: I wrote one little piece of code and the world falls apart.

That’s a question that many are asking and will warrant serious answers once systems are operational again. For most people, this week was likely the first time they had heard of CrowdStrike and its Falcon platform. This company, though publicly traded, was by no means a household name. Yet, it was widely and almost exclusively used by some of the world’s largest corporations without any significant backup plan in place. The result was a clusterfuck of global proportions. Literally.

Legislation has always been woefully behind technology. While the concept of “too big to fail” has always been applied to housing and financial institutions, it’s time for another look at just what companies - even unknown ones - have surreptitiously wound their way into essential corners of our lives.

How TF was this allowed to happen? Why did this happen now?

The answer is a combination of astrology and monopoly. Let’s start with the latter.

Not-so-Friendly Competition

The Industrial Revolution saw fervent competition between new manufacturers and a variety of products. Innovation abounded! An idea would catch on and then it became a race to see who could dominate the market. Ideally, a few producers would flourish, continually challenging one another not only to continue innovating, but to also keep their prices competitive.

However, not all industry leaders subscribed to this power-sharing theory. They were more of the “If you can’t beat them, buy them out” mentality, wanting to eliminate competition by any means necessary including mergers and hostile takeovers. Once they consolidated their power and held a monopoly on that field, there was little cause to keep innovating and even less of an incentive to keep their prices competitive. If you need their widget, you pay their price or go without.

You likely know many of their names: Rockefeller (oil), Perdue (poultry), Ford (automobiles), Vanderbilt (shipping and railroads), Carnegie (steel), Morgan (banking), and Koch (oil and yes, *that* Koch family). They were undeterred and could be ruthless in their quest for industry dominance. The monopolies they created were the epitome of Money Culture - a very select few at the top and everyone else under their control. It was not good for society nor for the national economy, but it wasn’t illegal.

Bust the Trust

So, Congress decided to change that! There are three pieces of legislation that are considered the core pillars of antitrust litigation. The first is the Sherman Act of 1890, which carries civil and criminal penalties for violations. The other two were both passed in 1914. The Federal Trade Commission Act established the independent agency of the same name, and the Clayton Act addressed mergers and issues not covered by the Sherman Act. The result of this legislation was the dismantling of monopolies and a return to more competitive production.

All three laws have seen amendments over the years and have managed to adapt successfully to changing industries and technologies. However, technology and its adoption has always moved faster than legislation or litigation, especially as it has become so integral to every facet of our daily lives.

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission began to take on “Big Tech”, filing antitrust lawsuits against Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google, the latter of which should get a ruling in the next few weeks. However, as the CrowdStrike outage has made clear, there are companies we’ve never heard of that hold a dominant market share of products we don’t even know we use. How do you combat that?

Chaos in the Cosmos

This is where we can look to astrology for some answers, especially regarding the question, “Why did this happen now?” You can blame (or thank) the planets!

Let’s take a look at the CrowdStrike Outage event chart aspects. We are not looking at the company’s natal chart, just that of the event using 3:00pm EDT as the estimated time the disruption began, although the actual update that triggered the outage may have been sent a bit earlier.

Event astrological chart of the CrowdStrike outage on July 18, 2024, showing squares and a trine.

A few things draw my immediate attention. At the time of the outage, Mars and Uranus were in a separating conjunction in the Earth sign of Taurus, which rules money, values, and resources. Mars attacks, and while this wasn’t a cyberattack, people were harmed as a result of this event. The damage done to our resources and finances has not yet been calculated, but it will be huge. Uranus rules electricity and innovation, but can also make things happen suddenly. Check, check, and check!

This Mars-Uranus conjunction is also sitting on the fixed star Algol. Not everyone works with fixed stars or has even heard of them, but Algol is one worth paying attention to. This fixed star lives at 26° Taurus and represents the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa in the constellation Perseus. It is one of the oldest Arabic stars used in Western astrology and has a litany of cheerful names, such as “the beheading star”, “the Demon’s Head”, and my personal favorite Tseih She - “Pile of Corpses” (Chinese). Suffice it to say that Algol adds a particularly violent flavor to any aspect it touches.

Transiting Mercury in Leo squared the Mars-Uranus-Algol conjunction at the time of the outage. Squares are when planets meet at a 90° angle, and it is considered a hard aspect. This means that the associated event will be challenging. Mercury rules transportation and communication, two of the largest sectors impacted, and Leo? Well, Leo is a Fire sign and likes to be seen. With the hard aspect to Uranus, it was sure to make a grand entrance!

But wait - there’s more! The Moon in the fiery sign of Sagittarius was loosely squaring Saturn in Pisces. Saturn is the planet of structure, discipline, boundaries, and restrictions. In its best form, it can give us the focus to achieve our goals, but in a watery sign like Pisces, those supports are dissolved. This can be useful if those structures no longer work and need to be replaced, but it doesn’t mean the process is fun. The Moon rules the collective, who were certainly fired up as the structure that supports so many services they rely upon dissolved in an instant.

Oh. My. Yod.

This 26° Moon in Sagittarius did something else, though. Although Moon transits move quickly, this passage through Sagittarius created a Yod with the Sun at 26° of Cancer and the Mars-Uranus-Algol conjunction at 26° of Taurus. A Yod is the result of two quincunx aspects (150°) that share a common point at one end and are sextile (60°) at the other to form an isosceles triangle. If that sounds too mathy, just think of it like an arrowhead hitting its target.

Event astrological chart of the CrowdStrike outage on July 18, 2024, showing a Yod with the Moon at the apex and Uranus, Mars, and the Sun at the base.

A Yod is powerful - that common point at the tip of the arrowhead is something has been “pointed at” and must be addressed, which leads us to our next point!

Speaking of the Moon, this event was near to the Full Moon in Capricorn on Sunday, July 21, 2024. Capricorn is the CEO of the zodiac, ruling government and power structures. This Full Moon is an anomaly, being the second consecutive one in this sign. The first was on June 21, at 1°, which is a degree of initiation.

Full Moons reveal and bring something to light, and this second Full Moon is at the anaretic 29°. It is the degree of endings, crisis, decay, and change. By now, we know that this is also the day that President Biden chose to end his reelection campaign. A postmortem of this outage will likely reveal just how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is to collapse, be it from nation-state Black Hats or incompetent asshats.

One final note: Pluto, the planet of death and transformation, is trine the Mars-Uranus-Algol conjunction. Pluto is also currently retrograde in Aquarius, which governs technology, the collective, and is ruled by unconventional Uranus. Trines are the “ease and flow” aspect, which can be a positive or negative depending on where you stand. In this case, the triggering of this outage was incredibly easy - just push an update with a line of faulty code and VIOLA! INSTA-CHAOS!

Pluto is about to slip back into Capricorn, and this transition will be asking us to examine and remake our relationships to technology, power, and how we use them to govern. It’s a topic we will discuss deeply in upcoming posts!

One and done? Or nah…

So, with Mercury retrograde coming up, will we see this square - and these problems - again? Sort of. As Mercury does the retrograde cha-cha slide between Leo and Virgo, it will square Uranus twice more, but Mars will have moved on by then. However…

The next two squares will occur on August 18 and September 7.

If you are not already aware, the next square of August 18, 2024, is also the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Right in the middle of Mercury retrograde. WTF???

Does this mean the world will fall apart again? No, it doesn’t, but it could be a bumpy ride. In fact, I would absolutely NOT have chosen this week for the DNC because LAWD! are the transits some kind of ish, but that’s a subject for a future issue, and you better believe we’ll be covering it!