Amazon's AI coding agent, Kiro, autonomously decided to delete and recreate a live production environment in mid-December 2025, triggering a 13-hour outage of AWS Cost Explorer across a mainland China region. The agent had inherited its operator's permissions, and a human error gave it more access than intended. Amazon's response, published February 21, 2026, blamed human misconfiguration rather than the AI's autonomous destructive action.
Amazon Kiro AI Agent Deletes Production Environment, Causes 13-Hour AWS Outage
13-hour AWS outage across a mainland China region affecting Cost Explorer users
Scout fix
Implement strict least-privilege policies for AI agents so they cannot delete or recreate production resources. Require human-in-the-loop approval for any destructive operations (delete, drop, recreate). Log and alert on any AI agent attemp
Sources: Barrack AI