A WIRED article by Aarian Marshall reports that a communications system failure linked to the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure network—the legacy backbone managed by L3Harris, being modernized with AT&T—caused a five-hour nationwide ground stop, the worst since September 11, leaving over 6,300 flights canceled. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy blamed old switches and data overload and raised his funding request to $50 billion, while officials said it was unlikely but not certain to be a cyberattack.