AWS outage caused by successful ‘kill-switch’ test, employee claims

An Amazon cloud outage recently shut down much of the internet, leaving users unable to access major web and app services. Now an alleged reason for the blackout has been revealed.

Hours after Amazon Web Services (AWS) went down, an Amazon employee made a bombshell claim that the tech giant tested a so-called “kill switch” that resulted in a global outage.

In a video shared on TikTok, the employee alleged, “I believe that trying to test the kill switch and it works,”adding that management had no information for employees.

Another employee can be heard in the background alleging that the company has cleansed the “kill switch” from everything.

For context, the so-called “Kill Switch” is a conspiracy theory that states Amazon has a secret button that it can use to control the online infrastructure and can shut it down any time, if they want to.

The outage began at 3:11 a.m. ET and the services were restored by 6 p.m. on Monday, October 20, 2025. The company cited an “operational issue” with its domain name system for the outage.

However, they did not comment on the employee's allegations regarding testing a kill-switch.

The video has since gone viral on TikTok and has been viewed over 1.9 million times.