How a Cyberattack Disrupting the Internet Could Cost the Economy $2.1 Billion per Hour

After the well-coordinated cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, a pressing question arose: how much damage could cybercriminals inflict on the economy if they managed to take down the internet for an hour, ten hours, or even a full day?

The British company Merchant Machine set out to estimate the economic losses from a large-scale cyberattack that would disrupt internet access. Their researchers provided the following forecasts:

• If the internet goes down for one hour, the global economy would lose $2.1 billion.
• If the outage lasts 24 hours, the losses would reach $51 billion.

Analysts emphasized that the larger a country’s economy, the greater its losses. For example:

• The United States would lose $306.3 million per hour and $7.3 billion after 24 hours.
• China would lose $244 million per hour or $5.8 billion after a full day.

By the same logic, major retailers would be hit the hardest. Amazon, for instance, would lose $44 million for every hour without internet access. Instagram would lose even more—$53 million in just 60 minutes.

It’s important to note that the researchers based their calculations on data from Netblocks and annual company revenue reports. However, they did not account for factors such as the inability to complete transactions during an internet outage and similar indirect effects.