The end of USB drives

I just read a really stupid article in T3 magazine that stated USB storage is now obsolete.

The author argued that with cloud storage USB drives and other local storage is now obsolete and pointless. I would love to see how they would do a clean OS install on any PC without a USB stick.

And there is no way I would trust cloud storage for important files.

I even still use DVD-Rs sometimes to back some things up just to have a physical offline copy stored and quite a few larger mechanical HDDs.

Exactly, no way of trusting cloud storage, I don't use any. Still have many USB drives lying around.

How do you backup if internet is down? How do you give files to a friend without internet?
I bet most of people that dont work with computers dont know how to transfer files between computers without a pen.