During an interview on Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed suggestions of a connection between Friday’s FAA nationwide ground stop and the preceding Microsoft outage.
“There’s conspiracy theories running all over the place…my job is to make sure that’s not taking place. If it did take place, we’d be honest with the American people,” Mullin said when asked by host Peter Doocy why the public believes “something big” caused the ground stop.
“They are not connected whatsoever,” Mullin went on to say. “Truth is — we deal with bad things every day at DHS. Most of it doesn’t make the headlines because we’re able to get ahead of it,” the secretary added.
He attributed the aviation disruption to decades-old technology and noted that the federal government needs to stop funding piecemeal fixes and build an entirely new system.
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NOW: DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin SHUTS DOWN "conspiracy theories" that something "big" is happening linking the Microsoft outage to FAA
DOOCY: The FAA failure and Microsoft outage? You get why so many people think something BIG is happening here?
MULLIN: "There's conspiracy… pic.twitter.com/LgqOlBtKyA
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 15, 2026
The interview followed earlier statements Mullin made at White House briefings on Friday. “I want to make sure everybody understands there is no connection between this and Microsoft. I know a lot of people are making that jump. This is — so far, what we’ve seen, there is actually no cyberattack. We’re still working through that process. Our teams are working,” the secretary said.
Elsewhere in the press conference, Mullin acknowledged that the ground stop amounted to the largest such order since the September 11 attacks, but stressed that the two events were not comparable. “This isn’t another 9/11. I just can’t repeat that enough,” he said.
Mullin added, “There is no indication and we had no reason to believe that as of right now, that this was a threat to the United States. This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA.”
Regarding cyber involvement, Mullin said officials had seen “zero evidence” of an attack. “When we start looking at cyber threats, cyber attacks, typically some people are going to raise their hand up and say, ‘Hey, we did that.’ There’s no chatter. We haven’t seen any footprints.” He described the evidence as pointing to a mechanically driven issue while stating, “We’re not ruling out anything at this point.”
The ground stop was issued by the FAA shortly before 4 p.m. Eastern Time Friday after a telecommunications instability affected multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The action, which officials said was taken out of an abundance of caution, lasted several hours before airspace reopened around 8:15 p.m. ET.
Legacy TDM (time-division multiplexing) equipment became unstable when data flooded the FAA’s FTI network at a rate of 1,000 connection attempts every 4 to 5 seconds. This disrupted aircraft communications and radar feeds at 17 of 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers and some Terminal Radar Approach Controls, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Initial investigation identified two potential sources: a radar site in Amarillo, Texas, and a radio communications site in El Dorado, Arkansas. L3Harris, the network service provider, had been performing routine work at the El Dorado site, including deployment of a new router as part of a multi-year transition from copper wire to fiber optics.
“Based on all available evidence, we have no indication that this was a cyberattack or an outside nefarious actor,” the FAA said in a statement.
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[ H/T Trending Politics ]
