U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said nationwide flight groundings
stemmed from a "telecom failure" tied to aging network systems and asked
Congress for $50 billion in emergency funding to upgrade the air traffic control
(ATC) system. Duffy said there was no wholesale communications or radar outage
during the ground-stop. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Marlin said
the incident was not related to Microsoft's recent service outage and that
investigators have found no evidence of a cyberattack or AI interference,
warning that system age and data overload represent a national security risk;
remediation and investigations are ongoing.