I will start with two caveats. One, we really don’t know exactly what happened yesterday, and therefore we really do not know who deserves what specific criticism about the causes. Two, the country’s air traffic infrastructure is antiquated and is in dire need of upgrading (and yes, this is a known problem that is hardly the sole responsibility of the Trump administration).
Yesterday I did something I rarely do outside of election night: I turned on the news and watched for several hours uninterrupted. First, it was to simply figure out what was going on. I had been working in the yard listening to a podcast when my wife came home and said that all planes were grounded, plus a riverboat in New Orleans had capsized, which all sounded pretty bad. Given the Microsoft outage earlier this week, my mind went to cyberterrorism or AI mischief, to be honest.
Well, after some false concerns about the National Weather Service further amped those concerns, things started to seem perhaps a little less dramatic than I initially thought might be the case. But I was soon struck by the utter lack of official word from the administration. All that we seemed to have, roughly two hours into this mess, was the FAA saying that it “doesn’t know what is going on” and a brief statement to camera by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who was focused on truly important matters, like correcting a report for using AI instead of SI.
Finally, hours into the crisis, Mullin and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy briefed the nation. It was a remarkable event (and not in a good way).
The Air Current summarizes the information provided:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin confirmed in a nighttime press conference from the White House that the nationwide ground stop had been lifted. They diagnosed the cause as overloaded routers that “experienced instability” beginning at 3:36 p.m. Eastern time when over 3,500 flights were airborne over the U.S.
While Mullin said “there’s nothing completely certain right now” about the cause of the outage, “it doesn’t appear” there is evidence of a cyberattack or threat from rogue AI systems.
“What it appears to be right now is, as Secretary Duffy and FAA was going in and putting patches into the system, they were putting new equipment and new technology, and that new equipment, new technology…it was overwhelming the older system,” he added.
One thing that struck me was that Mullin stated that the crisis was not caused by a cyberattack, but also, as quoted above, “there’s nothing completely certain right now.” So, which is it? His main evidence that it was not an attack appeared to be that no one had claimed responsibility. This had occurred to me as well, but surmise is not actual evidence, nor is it what top officials should be using to make assessments like this.
The bulk of the “briefing” was a combination of ass-kissing of Trump by two cabinet secretaries and Sean Duffy whining about needing more money to fix the problem while decidedly eliding the question of who has had a governing trifecta since January 20, 2025.
The whole thing can be summed up by Mullin himself:
Indeed.
After I finally abandoned the news, I couldn’t help but think: what if this had been a real crisis?
The inability of this administration to have provided even the most basic briefings hours into a national ground stoppage of all flights (an action many of us associate with 9/11) was pretty incredible and demonstrated a lack of capacity and basic understanding of core government functions. I am not saying, at all, that I expected answers to all my questions about what was going on immediately. But I think it is the bare minimum responsibility of the government that is responsible for things like air traffic control to be able to give a basic briefing as to what the government knows, to tell us in basic terms what is being done, and to provide some assurance to the population that the problem is being addressed.
When the power or internet goes out at your house, do you not feel better if you can check an app or website on your phone to know that, yes, the relevant company is aware of the problem and that crews are on their way? Basic information, often to simply acknowledge that a problem exists, can alleviate some anxiety.
Again: bare minimum.
Instead, we get Heckle and Jeckle waiting hours to tell us anything, and it’s mostly praising Trump and asking for billions of dollars.
Nothing about last night inspired a lick of confidence.
It’s as if appointing a bunch of incompetent boobs to lead complex organizations was a bad idea!
Apropos of nothing, that reminds me of these two Axios stories: U.S. loses measles elimination status, and MAGA turns on Lutnick amid China spy scandal.
So, yes, the ATC system needs a massive overhaul, so maybe Duffy should have been focused on that instead of making a reality show with his family. And, for that matter, maybe Trump should be more concerned with planes in the sky than ballrooms, arches, and reflecting pools.
And, of course, there is stuff like this (from PBS last year): How DOGE’s cutbacks at the FAA could affect aviation safety.
See also Wired: No Pilots. Few Air Traffic Controllers. What Could Go Wrong?
On September 27, US transportation secretary Sean Duffy posted a video on X with the words “GAME CHANGER.” “Introducing ‘SMART’—the new air traffic management tool that saves YOU time, cuts back DELAYS, and makes your flying experience BETTER,” he wrote. This was a new AI-infused air traffic control system. Almost three weeks later, that post would get a new life, as a nervous joke, as the FAA issued a national groundstop on Friday the 13th that instantly threw the world’s airline schedules into chaos. The administration quickly announced that there was no evidence of a cyberattack, and no sign that SMART had anything to do with the communications failure at the heart of the government’s decision to suspend flights. But when asked on Friday night whether he could definitively rule out AI failure, Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin could only say, “There’s nothing certain right now.”
But, you know: “This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like”
See also: Ann Telnaes.
