Why China Was Not Affected By Friday’s IT Crash

While businesses in the US and Europe awoke on Friday to a global IT meltdown that shut down administrations, airports, and hotels, China entered its weekend largely unaffected.

KEY FACTS

The problem turned out to have come from a software update from Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which generates more than half of its revenue from the United States. The company’s technology is used by many of the world’s largest banks, healthcare and energy companies.
“The impact of Friday’s incident on China was very small, with almost no impact on local public life,” said Gao Feng, senior research director at Gartner. “Only some foreign companies in China were affected.”
“The main reason is that domestic Chinese companies do not use CrowdStrike products, so they are not affected,” Gao said. “CrowdStrike’s customers are mainly concentrated in Europe and the United States.”
Anecdotally, ride-hailing services, e-commerce and other internet-related systems in China were running smoothly on Friday. Chinese state media also said Friday evening that international flights at Beijing’s two airports were operating normally and that Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines were not affected by large-scale technical system failures.
One of the most notable impacts of the IT outage – including in China – was on Microsoft Windows devices trying to integrate an update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon product, resulting in a blue screen and computer reboot cycle.
Microsoft products are widely used in China, with Windows accounting for about 87 percent of PC shipments on the mainland last year, according to Canalys. This is higher than the share of 79% for the rest of the world in the first quarter of this year.
Microsoft Office 365 products and the Azure cloud service are operated in China by a local company called 21Vianet. It is not yet clear whether localization contributed to the limited impact of Friday’s crash.

WHY AREN’T CHINESE COMPANIES USING CROWDSTRIKE?

In recent years, the US and Chinese governments have forced domestic companies to use proprietary technology and store data locally for national security reasons.

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Canalys pointed out that the Chinese-made UOS, or Unity operating system, has seen growing adoption among state-owned enterprises and government sectors, although Windows still dominates the domestic PC market.

“There is very little impact because CrowdStrike is hardly used in China,” said Rich Bishop, CEO of AppInChina, which publishes international software in China.

“That’s partly because many of the security threats that CrowdStrike is designed to protect against come from China,” he said, adding that Chinese companies typically use products from Tencent, 360 and other businesses.

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Europe’s Deadly Summer Heat Exposed The Cost Of A Warming Continent

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

October 23, 2026

Europe experienced its deadliest summer for heat-related deaths on record in 2026, with an estimated 24,400 excess deaths linked to extreme temperatures across 30 countries. Researchers estimate that human-induced climate change was responsible for around 32,000 of the deaths attributed to heat in the study’s broader analysis, accounting for 65% of the total.

The findings highlight the growing public-health consequences of global warming, largely driven by fossil fuel use, as extreme heat becomes more frequent and severe.

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A Summer Of Dangerous Heat

Between June and August, heatwaves pushed temperatures in Western Europe to an average of 2.9°C above the 1991–2020 norm, with some days reaching 12°C above average. Nearly a third of estimated heat-related deaths occurred during a particularly intense heatwave between 17 June and 1 July.

“These numbers are a stark reminder that our hotter, more extreme summers are having an increasingly severe impact on public health,” said Dr Clair Barnes, a researcher at Imperial College London and co-author of the study.

The estimated toll exceeded previous peaks of around 29,000 deaths in summer 2022 and 28,000 in 2003 across the region studied.

How Researchers Estimated The Toll

Researchers modelled the relationship between temperature and mortality across 854 urban areas in the EU, UK, Norway and Switzerland, covering around 40% of the population in the 30 countries studied.

The analysis incorporated temperature records, age, socioeconomic conditions, environmental factors and access to healthcare. By comparing actual temperatures with those expected without human-induced warming, the team estimated the additional deaths attributable to climate change.

Final official mortality figures for summer 2026 are not yet available in many countries, and heat-related deaths are often underreported because their effects can be difficult to identify directly.

Older People Face The Greatest Risk

People aged 85 and over accounted for roughly half of the estimated deaths. However, the impact extended across age groups, with around 800 excess deaths among adults aged 20–44 and approximately 6,000 among people under 65.

Southern Europe experienced the highest mortality burden, reflecting hotter temperatures and other vulnerabilities, including air pollution, limited green space and unequal access to healthcare and heat-alert systems.

Italy, France And Spain Record Highest Toll

Italy recorded an estimated 13,303 heat-related excess deaths, followed by France with 7,268 and Spain with 6,824. Germany recorded around 6,340, while the UK saw an estimated 4,354 deaths.

In the UK, the heat also placed significant pressure on healthcare services. Andrew Hartle, Professor of Practice of Anaesthesia at Imperial College Healthcare, said demand during the summer resembled that of a severe winter virus season.

Cities Urged To Strengthen Heat Protection

Researchers say cities can reduce the risks through climate shelters, external shading and building retrofits, alongside measures to help residents avoid exposure during the hottest hours. Checking on vulnerable people, staying hydrated and following heat alerts are also important.

The researchers stress that adaptation must go hand in hand with reducing fossil fuel use to limit further warming. The findings underline that extreme heat is already a major public-health threat across Europe, with thousands of lives at risk each summer.

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