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TLDR, unexpected blank fields

> policy change was inserted into the regional Spanner tables

> This policy data contained unintended blank fields

> Service Control... pulled in blank fields... hit null pointer causing the binaries to go into a crash loop

Really whatever null condition caused a crash is mostly irrelevant. The big problem is instantaneous global replication of policy changes . All code can fail unexpectedly, the gradual rollout of the code was pointless since it doesn't take effect until any policy changes. Yet policy changes are near instantaneous.

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