How Amazon put Ukraine’s ‘government in a box’ — and saved its economy from Russia
Since Februrary, Amazon has been playing Santa Claus to Ukraine,
delivering planeloads of goods, including blankets, hygiene kits,
diapers, food and toys, for the war-torn nation and refugees in Poland
and other parts of Europe.
But long term, what’s more important to
Ukrainians than the gifts coming in is what’s going out: massive
amounts of government, tax, banking and property data vulnerable to
destruction and abuse should Russian invaders get their hands on it.
Since
the day Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24, Amazon has been working
closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and
ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer
storage units called Snowball Edge, then funneling the data into
Amazon’s cloud computing system.
“This is the most technologically advanced war in human history,”
said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s 31-year-old vice prime minister and
minister of digital transformation, referring not just to weapons but
data too. Amazon Web Services’ “leadership made a decision that saved
the Ukrainian government and economy.”
Amazon has invested $75
million so far in its Ukraine effort, which includes the data transfer
via the Snowballs. Fedorov, speaking at a tech conference in Las Vegas
this month, called it “priceless.”
The data, 10 million gigabytes so far, represent “critical
information infrastructure. This is core for operation of the economy,
of the tax system, of banks, and the government overall,” he said. The
data also include property records whose safekeeping can help prevent
theft of Ukrainian homes, businesses and land.
Through
history, invaders have “come in and staged fake referendum and parceled
out the land to their chums,” said Liam Maxwell, head of government
transformation at Amazon Web Services, the company’s highly profitable
cloud computing arm. “That kind of thing has been happening since
William the Conquerer.”
The Odessa Journal newspaper reported in
June that residents of the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol whose homes
had been destroyed were being moved into the homes of citizens who had
fled the area, and were being forced to find those who left and pressure
them to cooperate in some fashion with the Russians.
Maxwell,
who’s based in London, had already been working with Ukraine for years
when it became clear by January that Russia planned to attack the
country.
At the time, Ukrainian law required the majority of government data
and certain private data to be housed on servers in Ukraine. In
February, parliament changed that law to allow the information transfer.
On
Feb. 24, the day of the invasion, Maxwell met for lunch with Ukrainian
Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko at the Ukrainian Embassy in London.
They
sketched out with pen and paper a list of the most essential data: the
population register, land and property ownership records, tax payment
records, bank records, education registries, anti-corruption databases
and more. The project involved 27 Ukrainian ministries, 18 Ukrainian
universities, the country’s largest remote learning K-12 school serving
hundreds of thousands of displaced children, and dozens of other private
sector companies including Ukraine’s largest private financial
institution, PrivatBank.
Early on, the Snowball units, in their
shock-proof gray containers, were flown from Dublin to Krakow, Poland.
Then the Ukrainians “spirited these devices over the border” into
Ukraine, Maxwell said.
After the data downloads, much of the information is being sent to
the cloud over secure networks, and the Snowballs, loaded with up to 80
terabytes of encrypted data each, are shipped back to Amazon. For good
reason, Maxwell doesn’t want to say where, but says “it’s a tense moment
around the baggage carousel. Here’s government in a box, literally.”
Once
it’s in the cloud and distributed around the world, everyone breathes
easier. “You can’t take out the cloud with a cruise missile,” Maxwell
said.
The mission required speed, organization and deep technical
skill. Maxwell said Fedorov, “a man in a hurry,” ticked all the boxes.
Still,
Amazon spent time training the Ukrainians on how the AWS system works.
That free training has been extended to refugees in Poland and in other
locations in Europe. There’s an upside for Amazon, in addition to
recognition for its efforts: Maxwell notes that the program is equipping
those refugees with crucial tech skills — and in the process expanding
AWS’ talent base.
Amazon didn’t have to worry about its relationship with Russia on the
Snowball project. It doesn’t have one. “We didn’t have anything to turn
off there,” Maxwell said. “We had never invested there. It’s a point of
principle.”
Since the project began, other countries have told
Amazon they’re interested in out-of-the-country cloud backups of
government data. Maxwell wouldn’t say which countries but noted keen
interest from East Asia.
