Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#641

Post by senordevnyc » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #632

mrnotcrazy wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this more? It's not clear to me what this is implying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Does the NSA even have the ability to monitor all AI traffic like this? Wouldn’t that require tons of data centers that there literally hasn’t been time to build yet? I really have no idea, maybe the asymmetry of the compute required to monitor is way lower than the compute required to serve inference?

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#642

Post by gonzalohm » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #626

The OpenAI outage lasted only 15 minutes and when it happened everyone started to use the other models which created super heavy load for them. This then cascaded into them all being down. Does this really need an explanation?

That's not necessarily the reason. Less technical people are usually bound to just one provider

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#643

Post by chews » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

someone had to swap out the tape drive in Room 641A.

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#644

Post by jansan » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

mrnotcrazy wrote: post #630

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

Could you expand on this more? It's not clear to me what this is implying.

There is No Such Thing

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#645

Post by CringeHN2 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

mrnotcrazy wrote: post #630

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

Could you expand on this more? It's not clear to me what this is implying.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#646

Post by senordevnyc » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

Were there significant API outages too? I didn’t notice any on my production workflows, and I’d assume what you’re implying would cover API routes too, otherwise it seems kinda pointless.

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#647

Post by itdaniher » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

mrnotcrazy wrote: post #630

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

Could you expand on this more? It's not clear to me what this is implying.

It would be weird for the Mandatory NSA Logging Program to be synchronous with serving customer traffic, but-

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#648

Post by chews » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #641

ceejayoz wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Does the NSA even have the ability to monitor all AI traffic like this? Wouldn’t that require tons of data centers that there literally hasn’t been time to build yet? I really have no idea, maybe the asymmetry of the compute required to monitor is way lower than the compute required to serve inference?

it's fair to say they do and have for ages... it's not that hard to assume a well trusted TLS cert is under their control.

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#649

Post by strictnein » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

Chance-Device wrote: post #624

It’s probably the thing that everyone thinks it is. OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAI are all routed through something that we’re not supposed to know exists and that thing had a whoopsie.

OpenAI and Anthropic have their systems in dozens of data centers, including using compute from the major cloud providers. Are you implying that all of these data centers (and many of their employees) are involved in helping the the US government secretly tap every single AI conversation by routing them through some unknown network/device?

Or did a couple of companies with poor uptime records happen to have overlapping downtime?

Occam's Razor heavily, heavily points us towards the latter.

Re: Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?

#650

Post by derdi » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #625

It could be as simple as a new model (astra) was released which takes more resources combined with a surge in usage due to novelty took down OpenAI. Meanwhile everyone at big companies have the ability to switch models and moved to Anthropic pushing it too over the edge.

People keep saying this "everyone can switch" thing, but it's not my experience at $VeryBigCorp. We don't have an Anthropic contract at all. Is this different in other places? The bigger and more bureaucratic an org is, the less I would expect it to have contracts with all the providers. Curious about others' experiences.