Of Course Americans Blamed the Ground Stop on AI
· The Atlantic
For many hours, the Federal Aviation Administration did not explain why it issued a national ground stop in the United States this afternoon. The agency described the cause only as a “telecommunications outage” and cited “extraordinary circumstances,” but failed to say more. So speculation abounded: Was the problem connected with the onboarding of a new AI route-selection system this week? Is it somehow related to the Microsoft Outlook outage this week? Or is the cause some antiquated telecommunications system that just finally gave up trying?
In the absence of solid information from trusted authorities, people interpret crises through the prism of their preexisting concerns. When the aviation system shut down, many Americans’ minds went to DOGE cuts, cyberattacks by hostile foreign actors, recent reports of renegade AI. A safety planner’s job is to envision the full range of possible threats and assess how likely each one is to occur. Even before recent advances in artificial intelligence, the list of factors that could jeopardize commercial aviation was already long: terrorism, extreme weather, staffing strains, the decay of outdated communications networks, and more. AI could theoretically help the aviation system manage risks and disruptions, but it also adds many more variables that could go wrong.
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It’s no wonder many Americans were quick to envision rogue disruption caused by the new technology: When AI CEOs tell us that the risk of AI is so great that it is essentially uninsurable, people take notice.
The more prosaic reality is that America’s crucial infrastructure systems are built without sufficient resiliency. As a result, a single disruption can have national consequences. CNN reported tonight that the aviation problem may have originated with network routers at Chicago’s Midway airport. In a fragile system, glitches spread unpredictably and potentially rapidly. So far, more than 10,000 flights have been disrupted.
Fortunately, our aviation-safety systems had sufficient backups to let planes land safely, and pilots have been communicating through emergency-frequency lines. The best analogy is a spare tire: It’s good enough to get you to the nearest gas station but not much farther.
The ground stop—which has now been lifted—has exposed either a new security vulnerability or a problem with old systems; either way, the economic impact could well be major. The high stakes are all the more reason that, in moments of crisis, authorities should quickly tell the public what is known, what is not known, and what they are doing to close the information gap. Finally, after four hours, the Trump administration held a press conference, at which Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that “things seem to be working, as we can say, in the right direction.” How long it will take for the mess at airports to clear is anyone’s guess.