Certainly, one might test the software by removing access to external systems to see what happens, whether things break, whether it complains… and certainly, that’s what’s happening.
Something I didn’t expect from this was to see the main complainers scramble to define what’s really important to them, thus implicitly justifying many of the cuts made.
You're right, as long as software is concerned, and customers being left without service is a non-issue.
Though if you do that with hardware, you might irreversibly break/short a component -- so you unplug, then figure out you actually needed that part, but plugging it back in now won't get the system working again.
I think "running a country" has more hardware-like characteristics than a pure software system.
Something I didn’t expect from this was to see the main complainers scramble to define what’s really important to them, thus implicitly justifying many of the cuts made.