You need to go outside, take a walk and then have a hot chocolate.

All is well, this is not the AIpocalypse. Just some dude fucking up something stupid, as usual.

Update before I can no longer edit:

> The Federal Aviation Administration told airlines the nationwide outages that prompted the ground stop were the result of a problem with network routers, according to an airline source.

> The problem is believed to have started at Chicago Midway International Airport and cascaded nationwide.

> A spokeswoman for the military’s Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said there was no evidence yet that the telecommunication outage was the result of any nefarious action by domestic or foreign actors.

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daishi55 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What possible basis could you have for saying this?

	▲	Jamesbeam 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A decade of experience solving nationwide problems because someone somewhere did something stupid, before I retired.

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hypeman1 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a pretty reductive response given the circumstances.

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Jamesbeam 6 hours ago | parent [-]

If you prefer a more lengthy answer.

If there was an attack on your country, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing, just like it did 9/11.

All I am getting is pictures of baked cookies right now. So there is no attack on your country.

Planes are not falling out of the sky, as you can see on publicly available platforms. Nothing is exploding on the ground, besides the poor souls choosing Taco Bell for dinner.

I am confident you will not be abducted or murdered by Aliens today either, pinky promise.

So whatever happens is not an immediate danger to the planes still in the air. And no danger to anyone on the ground.

The most simple explanation is that the communication between ground and air is not working properly, and as this is necessary to safely fly thousands of planes simultaneously, they should rather stay on the ground for safety reasons until they figure out what is wrong.

If you have any specific concerns not addressed above, feel free to share them.

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randysalami 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Just to be clear, I am not talking about an overt attack directly by a nation state on the US. Instead an indirect attack by a malicious actor at the behest of a nation state with plausible deniability. Like the hybrid-war model you see in Europe.

	▲	Jamesbeam 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I take your concerns seriously. I understand that Americans are on edge when the airspace gets grounded, we share the same trauma. You can be sure right now this is an all-hands-on-deck situation for your government. But they also publicly stated that right now, they have no reason to believe this was a hybrid or any attack by a foreign third party at all, and you can and should trust them, because there is a plan for this kind of scenario and the people who execute that are serving to protect you and do not care what color the party of the current clown in the White House has. That’s why I said relax and have something comforting. When I am stressed I’m having a hot chocolate with a nice big swirl of whipped cream. It will be fine. If you don’t trust your government, give me just a little of your trust for a few more hours and see if I am right. You’ll see, the conclusion will be that some idiot did something he shouldn’t have done, and that cascaded into a nationwide issue. People do the stupidest things all the time.

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Forgeties79 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah the boring answer is that this is likely the natural consequences of government cuts and historically just not staffing/funding the FAA properly.