[JimBrimble35]

There seems to be a high correlation between outages and security breaches. My guess is that at some point in the future there the consequences of these shutdowns will come to light in the media.

That, or this is all related to high profile sites being required to install some additional level of infrastructure which is being required in secret by an organization like the NSA.

Both theories require a fairly thick tin foil hat, but honestly.. I have a hard time believing that it's just random downtime.