blackout – Our Story Insight

Iran’s internet blackout extends into second week: NetBlocks

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 19:42:51 +0000

Customers use computers at an Internet cafe in Tehran, Iran.

Raheb Homavandi | Reuters

Iran remains under a near-complete internet blackout, data monitoring site NetBlocks, said on Saturday.

“A full week has now passed since #Iran fell into digital darkness under a regime-imposed national internet blackout,” NetBlocks said in a social media post.

“The measure remains in place at hour 168, leaving the public isolated without vital updates and alerts while officials and state media retain access,” NetBlocks said.

A chart in the post showed internet traffic at around 1% of its normal levels.

Internet traffic in Iran from Feb. 24, 2026 to March 7, 2026: NetBlocks via Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/116186683967916133.

NetBlocks via Mastodon

U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran continued on Saturday, one week after they launched their joint campaign to rid Tehran of its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities while also pushing for regime change.

Iran has implemented internet shutdowns during periods of social unrest in the past. A similar near-blackout was imposed for several weeks in January amid widespread protests in the country.

However, some analysts said that additional factors may be contributing to the internet disruption.

“While the actual cause is still unclear, it’s almost certainly a combination of both state-ordered suppression and external cyber disruption,” Kathryn Raines, cyber threat intelligence team lead at intelligence platform Flashpoint, told CNBC earlier this week.

Iran has not officially commented on the outage.

Analysts say that the lack of internet connectivity in Iran is likely to add to the fog of war, with citizens on the ground unable to communicate with their families, document events or get real-time updates on the conflict.

Cybersecurity firms warned that Iran is also likely to respond with cyberattacks, either carried out directly by the government or by affiliated proxy groups.

In a statement shared with CNBC, Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, said the firm was “already seeing activity consistent with Iranian-aligned threat actors and hacktivist groups conducting reconnaissance and initiating [denial-of-service] attacks.”

— Dylan Butts contributed to this story.

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The post Iran’s internet blackout extends into second week: NetBlocks appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Waymo rolls out software update after blackout stranded robotaxis across San Francisco

admin — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 21:49:42 +0000

Waymo is rolling out a fleet-wide software update after a massive San Francisco power outage exposed a critical bottleneck in its autonomous system — forcing the Alphabet-owned company to halt robotaxi service as driverless cars stalled at darkened intersections across the city.

The update is designed to help Waymo’s self-driving software better recognize and respond to large-scale power outages, allowing vehicles to move through dark intersections more decisively without overwhelming the company’s remote human assistance system, which got bogged down during the blackout.

The fix follows a weekend outage that knocked out electricity for nearly a third of San Francisco and disabled traffic signals citywide, triggering gridlock and leaving multiple Waymo vehicles stopped or stationary in the middle of busy streets.

A Waymo robotaxi sits stationary at a darkened San Francisco intersection after a power outage knocked out traffic signals across large parts of the city. AP

The blackout, sparked by a fire at a PG&E substation in the South of Market neighborhood, knocked out traffic signals across large swaths of the city on Saturday afternoon, creating gridlock that exposed limits in Waymo’s autonomous system as multiple vehicles stopped or remained stationary in the middle of busy streets.

Waymo said it proactively paused operations Saturday evening as the outage intensified, with nonfunctioning traffic lights and transit disruptions overwhelming city streets during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

Videos shared on social media showed multiple Waymo vehicles immobilized at intersections and along major corridors as power failed citywide, adding to congestion as police and fire crews were deployed to manually manage traffic in affected neighborhoods.

At the height of the outage, as many as 130,000 households — about 30% of the city — lost electricity, knocking out signals from downtown to the Richmond and Presidio and causing Waymo vehicles to stop at intersections just ahead of peak evening traffic.

The company said it worked with San Francisco officials throughout the blackout, returning vehicles to depots or pulling them safely to the side of the road as emergency crews worked to restore order on streets where traffic lights were completely dark.

Waymo suspended robotaxi service after a weekend blackout disabled traffic lights and left autonomous vehicles stalled at intersections citywide. Anadolu via Getty Images

Waymo resumed service Sunday evening after power was restored to most neighborhoods, though thousands of customers remained without electricity and PG&E crews continued repairs into Monday following what the utility described as “significant and extensive” damage at the substation.

Waymo said its vehicles are designed to treat dark signals as four-way stops, but acknowledged that the scale of the outage led to cars remaining stationary longer than usual as they attempted to confirm intersection conditions amid widespread signal failures.

The pause marked one of the most visible disruptions yet for Waymo in its home market, where the company operates fully driverless ride-hailing at scale and has pitched its technology as capable of handling complex urban conditions without human intervention.

A driverless Waymo vehicle waits at a nonfunctioning traffic signal during a massive power outage that snarled traffic across San Francisco. @brahmsstan via Storyful

Waymo has emerged as the leading commercial robotaxi operator in the US, running fully driverless ride-hailing services in five major cities and logging more than 100 million autonomous miles and over 14 million paid rides as of late 2025.

Its fleet of more than 1,500 vehicles operates at scale in markets including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta, as the company pushes an aggressive expansion plan targeting more than two dozen additional cities by the end of 2026.

Despite publishing data showing sharply lower crash rates than human drivers, Waymo has faced mounting scrutiny following a series of high-profile incidents, particularly in San Francisco.

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Those include collisions with cyclists and vehicles, animal fatalities, software-related traffic violations and disruptions tied to infrastructure failures.

The latest San Fran incident has intensified concerns among residents and some lawmakers about how autonomous vehicles handle rare but predictable “edge cases,” such as large-scale power outages.

Critics argue those scenarios expose limitations in current technology even as Waymo seeks rapid growth.

The outage exposed limits in Waymo’s autonomous system as vehicles stopped amid widespread infrastructure failures. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The company has said it is reviewing lessons from the outage while continuing to scale its driverless service nationwide.

“We resumed ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday,” a Waymo spokesperson told The Post.

“Saturday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”

The spokesperson added that “throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials.”

“We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.”

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Waymo suspends San Francisco robotaxi service after blackout chaos

admin — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:44:24 +0000

Alphabet-owned Waymo has suspended its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after blackouts plagued the city Saturday afternoon.

“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” a Waymo spokesperson tells CNBC. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon. We appreciate your patience and will provide further updates as soon as they are available.”

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards

Waymo notice of service outage in San Francisco.

Source: Waymo

As power outages spread yesterday, videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in different parts of the city.

San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m. local time, including one he photographed on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue.

“They were just stopping in the middle of the street,” Schoolfield said.

A Waymo vehicle stuck between Parker and Beaumont, on the north side of Turk Boulevard in San Francisco.

Credit: Matt Schoolfield

The power outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco.

PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in “significant and extensive” damage, and said it could not yet provide a precise timeline for full restoration.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a 9 p.m. update on X that police officers, fire crews, parking control officers and city ambassadors were deployed across affected neighborhoods as transit service gradually resumed. “Waymo has also paused service,” Lurie said.

Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X: “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”

Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.

Tesla’s local ride-hailing service uses vehicles equipped with “FSD (Supervised),” a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times.

According to state regulators — including the California Department of Motor Vehicles and California Public Utilities Commission — Tesla has not obtained permits to conduct driverless testing or services in the state without human safety supervisors behind the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Tesla is vying to become a robotaxi titan, but does not yet operate commercial, driverless services. Tesla’s Robotaxi app allows users to hail a ride; however, its vehicles currently have human safety supervisors or drivers on board, even in states where the company has obtained permits for driverless operations.

Waymo, which leads the nascent industry in the West, is Tesla’s chief competitor in AVs, along with Chinese players like Baidu-owned Apollo Go.

The outage-related disruptions in San Francisco come as robotaxi services are becoming more common in other major U.S. cities. Waymo is among a small number of companies operating fully driverless ride-hailing services for the public, even as unease about autonomous vehicles remains high.

A survey by the American Automobile Association earlier this year found that about two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were fearful of autonomous vehicles.

The Waymo pause in San Francisco indicates cities are not yet ready for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of “How to Make AI Useful.”

“Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is,” he said.

Reimer noted that power outages are entirely predictable. “Not for eternity, but in the foreseeable future, we will need to mix human and machine intelligence, and have human backup systems in place around highly automated systems, including robotaxis,” he said.

State and city regulators will need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for “chaos gridlock,” just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a blackout.

Waymo did not say when its service would resume and did not specify whether collisions involving its vehicles had occurred during the blackout.

Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

— CNBC’s Riya Bhattacharjee contributed reporting.

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