Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pushed back Sunday against speculation that Friday’s nationwide FAA ground stop was connected to the Microsoft outage that occurred shortly beforehand.
During an appearance on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing,” Mullin said investigators had found no evidence linking the two incidents and cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the unusual disruption to U.S. air travel.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop Friday following telecommunications problems affecting the agency’s air traffic control system.
The disruption temporarily prevented flights from departing airports across the country while thousands of aircraft already in the air continued toward their destinations or were redirected.
The incident came shortly after Microsoft reported a separate service disruption, prompting online speculation that the events could have been connected.
Mullin rejected that theory Sunday.
“There is no connection,” Mullin said when asked about the timing of the two events.
The DHS secretary said the federal government investigated whether the FAA disruption involved a cyberattack or another deliberate action but found no evidence supporting those possibilities.
“There was no cyberattack,” Mullin said.
He described the FAA incident as a telecommunications failure rather than an outside attack on the nation’s aviation infrastructure.
The timing nevertheless attracted significant attention because of the extraordinary nature of a nationwide ground stop and the Microsoft problems that preceded it.
Mullin said officials examined the circumstances and found no connection between the two.
? 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 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."
"They are not connected whatsoever."
"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 FAA says its 1980s-era network got flooded with 1,000 CONNECTION ATTEMPTS every 4–5 seconds, traced to a new router at an El Dorado, Arkansas site
Microsoft blamed a botched network upgrade, saying it was "not related to cyber or AI."
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 15, 2026
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy similarly said Friday that the FAA had not completely lost its telecommunications or radar capabilities during the incident.
“We didn’t lose all telecom. We didn’t lose all radar,” Duffy said. “But that instability, because of abundance of caution and making sure we keep the American flier safe, we did the ground stop.”
The FAA eventually lifted the nationwide restriction after technicians tested the affected systems and determined they were stable enough for departures to resume.
“The FAA lifted the ground stop and some flight departures are resuming,” the agency said. “Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable.”
The disruption produced widespread delays, cancellations and diversions as airlines attempted to reposition aircraft and crews following the shutdown.
The incident also renewed concerns about the aging technology supporting portions of the nation’s air traffic control network.
Duffy has said some of the equipment involved was part of the FAA’s older infrastructure.
“This is all the old legacy equipment,” Duffy said following the outage. “All of the new equipment that’s been deployed did not go down.”
The Trump administration and Congress have been pursuing a broader modernization of the country’s air traffic control infrastructure, arguing that decades-old communications and computer systems need to be replaced.
Friday’s disruption provided another high-profile example of the potential consequences when critical aviation systems experience technical problems.
Mullin also emphasized that federal officials initially treated the incident seriously because investigators could not immediately rule out a national security threat.
“There is no indication and we have no reason to believe, as of right now, that this was a threat to the United States,” Mullin said Friday. “This was a telecommunication outage throughout FAA.”
