In spite of being urged by the Ukrainian government and others, Cloudflare is refusing to pull its services from Russia.
In a blog post, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but stated “Our conclusion, in consultation with those experts, is that Russia needs more Internet access, not less.”
Prince went on to state “Indiscriminately terminating service would do little to harm the Russian government, but would both limit access to information outside the country, and make significantly more vulnerable those who have used us to shield themselves as they have criticized the government”
Many other big tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, as well as traditional companies like McDonalds and Coca Cola, have stopped doing business in Russia.
My POV: Prince is correct that stopping Cloudflare services would not hurt evil Russian government leaders. Instead, it would hurt the Russian people, the vast majority of whom are innocent and many oppose the invasion.
But that’s true of nearly all the sanctions. I doubt that Putin dined frequently at McDonalds. Nearly all sanctions hurt the populace, not the government.
The point of the sanctions is to pressure the people to pressure the government to do the right thing, not to pressure the government directly.
Prince seems to fundamentally miss that point.
