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Large-Scale Cyber Outages Affecting Customers Worldwide; Trump Accepts Republican Nomination on Final Night of RNC; Harris Allies Call Democrats to Assess Concerns Over Biden; Reporter Evan Gershkovich on Trial for Espionage in Russia. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 19, 2024 - 04:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:00:00]

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Fred Pleitgen. It is Friday, July the 19th.

It's 9 a.m. in London, where we are currently following breaking news affecting a growing list of airlines all around the world. This is still very much a developing story. And according to the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States, all Delta, United, Allegiant and American Airlines flights are grounded due to communications issues, as they put it.

It's unclear how long the ground stop will last, but the FAA suggests there will be an update by 5 a.m. Eastern Time, which, of course, we are going to bring to you when it comes in. And all this comes after significant Microsoft outage brought Frontier Airlines and some competitors to a standstill for hours on Thursday. That ground stop has since been lifted.

However, all of this is a global issue. It's not just in the United States. Cyber outages are affecting Australia, New Zealand and China as well. Australian Airlines, Virgin Australia and Qantas Airways have been impacted by massive tech disruptions.

And I want to go straight to our own Marc Stewart, who's live for us in Beijing. Marc, what effects is all this happening in your part of the world?

MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fred, this is significant and it's going to continue to be significant in the hours ahead. It is just after four in the afternoon here in China, well into the business day across Asia. So this is definitely having an impact on people's lives.

As you mentioned, airlines and air travel is being impacted severely. Let me go through some of what we have been able to discover over the last few hours. As you mentioned, Virgin Australia and Qantas Airlines are having some issues. You can also add Turkish Airlines to the list.

We are also hearing from airports across the region that some of the kiosks that people use, the automated check-in services at Hong Kong, for example, are having some issues. The list keeps growing. That's what we know thus far. But this is really having an impact on people's everyday lives. For

example, some grocery stores in Australia are having operational issues. It's also impacting finance and banking. The Malaysian Stock Exchange is having issues. There are also bank issues in New Zealand.

Now, all of this really caught our attention at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon when there were reports, especially on Chinese social media, of people encountering what's called a blue screen. That's kind of the warning picture that Microsoft posted when people tried to access some of the different tools that they use. This may perhaps be an issue with the cloud, but we're still waiting for some clarity from Microsoft.

In addition, we have heard from some government officials across Asia. At this point, there are no indications that this was any kind of cyber attack, but this is still very early on into this investigation.

But, Fred, as you rightly mentioned, the impact to airlines is going to be tremendous. You know, a lot of airlines, such as the Asian carriers like Qantas and Virgin Australia, they're going to be flying their planes, or they had hoped to fly their planes, across the Pacific to pick up passengers in the States to make this return trip. Well, now all of that is significantly off schedule in many cases. So, what is a problem here in Asia is obviously going to be a problem likely in Europe and, of course, North America.

Fred, we are literally compiling a list of problems. As soon as we get more to share, we'll certainly pass that along to you.

PLEITGEN: Yes, I mean, it's a huge list. And actually, as you're saying that, I'm just getting in news right now that the global outages are also affecting European airports already as well. So, this is definitely something that is taking on a global scale very quickly.

And also, as you were speaking, we saw some of those blue screens that you were talking about. That is a massive impact, I mean, not just for airports and airlines, but for people around the whole region, isn't it?

STEWART: Indeed. I mean, some people have been on social media making jokes that this has signaled the end of the workday here in Asia early. People are going to have a longer Friday.

But look, this part of the world is a big financial hub. Obviously, these airlines, when they don't operate flights on time, this can cost tens of thousands, I mean, very likely into the millions of dollars.

[04:05:02]

And think about the fact that if people can't get groceries delivered, which is such a popular service in this part of the world, the issues are just going to mount up and mount up. I mean, it's going to reverberate for hours to come -- Fred.

PLEITGEN: Marc Stewart, thank you very much there in Beijing. And we're obviously going to stay on that story for you. All right, and to American politics. Donald Trump has officially

accepted his party's presidential nomination days after surviving an assassination attempt, of course. And he promised to, quote, bring back the American dream during the closing night of the Republican Convention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America --

(APPLAUSE)

-- because there is no victory in winning for half of America. So tonight, with faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States. Thank you.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: Trump gave his first major speech since the shooting at his rally on Saturday, speaking for more than 90 minutes. It was the longest convention address in modern U.S. history. And the former president repeated many false claims as he went off script. He also vowed to unite Americans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: America's future will be bigger, better, bolder, brighter, happier, stronger, freer, greater and more united than ever before.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

And quite simply put, we will very quickly make America great again. Thank you very much.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: However, despite calling for unity, Trump went on to blame Democrats for, quote, weaponizing politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what's been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before. In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy --

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

-- especially since that is not true. In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country. (END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: Trump also slammed President Biden, even though a source had told CNN before the speech that Trump was expected to not even say Biden's name at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I say it often, if you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the 10 worst, added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done. I'm only going to use the term once. Biden, I'm not going to use the name anymore. Just one time. The damage that he's done to this country is unthinkable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: Now, the Biden campaign criticized Trump's speech with one advisor saying, quote, it's all about him, adding the former president has not changed, but has gotten worse. It comes as more Democrats are calling for Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.

Allies of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris are making calls to Democrats to assess concerns about President Joe Biden's ability to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box in November. A source tells CNN the Harris allies are making clear that she expects the president to stay in the race. Several Democrats say tensions in the party are increasing under pressure from donors and what is seen as maneuvering by competing interests. MJ Lee has the latest from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Based on conversations with dozens of sources inside and close to the White House and the campaign, what is increasingly becoming clear is that there are many senior officials both in the White House and the campaign who privately believe that the president must drop out of the 2024 race, that they believe the current situation is not politically tenable for the president and the campaign. As one senior Democrat put it to CNN, everyone is saying it privately. People see and feel the walls closing in.

Now, this comes as sources also tell CNN that the president has become exceptionally insulated and isolated. Everyone, of course, is familiar with the fact that the president has long relied on a pretty small circle of inner circle of advisers.

[04:10:00]

And what has happened since the debate, we are told, is that a stunningly small group of the most loyal and longtime aides are now dug in with the president, chief among them Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti. Many Democrats at this point are not sure whether the president is being presented with and getting realistic data. Some of the sources that we spoke to said that many meetings and phone calls where the president would be getting bad news, that those appear to have largely stopped.

Now, amid the speculation right now about the president's future and whether he will continue seeking a second term, we are learning as well tonight that senior most West Wing advisers have not had meetings amongst themselves or with the president to discuss the possibility of the president dropping out.

This comes after our Diana Bash also reported that the president still believes that there is a path to victory and that he does not believe that he has seen data or polling so far that prove that he cannot win.

MJ Lee, CNN at the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: And joining me now is Leslie Vinjamuri, who's head of the U.S. and America's program at Chatham House, an international think tank based right here in London. And Leslie, I was I was listening to speech, first of all, extremely long speech. And Donald Trump seemed to start out almost emotional when he spoke about the assassination attempt, but then went back into classic Trump ranting at his political opponents and basically saying he's going to do everything better, right.

LESLIE VINJAMURI, HEAD OF U.S. AND THE AMERICAS PROGRAMME, CHATHAM HOUSE: Yes, exactly. People were really watching the speech to see whether he would stick to that unity agenda. There were there were reasons certainly to believe after the assassination attempt that he might.

And what we really instead saw after that first sort of 15 or 20 minutes in an extremely long speech was, as you said, painting two pictures, one of a very dark America in a very difficult state on the brink of World War III, facing an invasion from across the world, an invasion of its southern border with record inflation. And again, so many of these claims are false when it comes to, you know, real data. But using that depiction to then portray in America a restoration of the American dream that he would like to deliver, claims he can deliver and really write back to a very divisive speech, doubling down on that allegation of, you know, implicitly of a stolen election.

And the old Donald Trump for many, but really an undisciplined Donald Trump. Many people in the audience looked bored. Some left.

It's hard to imagine people sitting through this kind of speech. And he was, you know, as we know, speaking to his most loyal of audiences. And at a time when the world is on tenterhooks waiting to see what America is going to do in November, I'm very worried.

And there was nothing reassuring for America's partners and allies in the speech that the president made it clear that he feels that America's allies are taking advantage of it. And that he would have a very different foreign policy.

And the single most important fact that really emerged from this convention was the announcement of J.D. -- Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as the vice presidential candidate, who really does make it very clear that the president has no intention of moving beyond that MAGA agenda. Instead, he is planning to double down on it if reelected.

PLEITGEN: Yes, yes, certainly J.D. Vance. That was definitely one of the I think on the international stage, the first time many people had actually heard from him. But to go back to President or former President Trump's speech, he did seem to be going back and forth on the topics and sort of going off on tangents.

It looked to me as though the people who must be concerned right now is anybody fighting for environmental standards in the United States and the world. And, of course, also America's European allies.

VINJAMURI: Absolutely. He made it very clear that he was going to double down on drilling.

And to be fair, President Biden has also made a big thing out of oil production. He doesn't speak that language and he's clearly pursued a climate agenda. But oil production is at an all time high. Donald Trump would double down on that and seek to make, as he says, America energy independent. And to make the rest of the world dependent on the United States for its energy.

Part of the logic behind that, if you listen to the broader set of people who are behind that America first policy agenda working to support Project 2025, part of their rationale is that dependence on Russia came with weaponization, came with lots of conditions, and that it's far safer to be dependent on the United States.

[04:15:04]

That might be true, but it's paired with a rejection of those initiatives that are designed to really advance a climate transition. And moving back on that, on really President Biden's signatory policy advance.

So this is a, for anybody who cares about climate, for the next generation of Americans who care about climate, this is not the agenda that they would be hoping to see.

PLEITGEN: Leslie Vinjamuri, thank you very much to you with us from London.

And still ahead, we have more of our continuing coverage of the Republican National Convention and Donald Trump's acceptance speech for the nomination of his party.

Plus, a deadly drone attack early Friday morning rattles Tel Aviv. Details on what we know about the incident and who's claiming responsibility. All that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PLEITGEN: All right, folks, returning to breaking news that we're following. Global cyber outages have caused delays and issues at European airports affecting travel, the media, and the London Stock Exchange website.

After mass outages worldwide have caused its system to shut down, airports here in Europe have reported issues with their IT systems. With Berlin airport saying that it's experiencing delays to check-in due to a, quote, technical fault. Some airlines in the United States are grounded due to the outages. Stay with us as we follow the updates on this developing story.

Meanwhile, the espionage trial of "Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich has resumed in Russia. The closed-door hearing was moved up by more than a month, and it's going at an unusually fast pace, with lawyers expected to give closing arguments today.

Moscow accuses Gershkovich of working for the CIA to gather information about a Russian tank company. Gershkovich, "The Wall Street Journal," and the U.S. government all vehemently deny those allegations.

Let's bring in Salma Abdelaziz. You've been following this trial and the story for us. What do you make of the fact that this is going at such a fast pace right now?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It almost seems like it's a foregone conclusion. You know, we heard that statement from Sergey Lavrov just a few days ago, that they have, quote, unrefutable evidence against Gershkovich, although they've provided none of that publicly. But this might bode well for Gershkovich.

And why is that? That is because he is believed to be used as a bargaining chip. I'm going to actually read you a statement from his employer, "The Wall Street Journal," that they just issued yesterday around these hearings.

Evan's wrongful detention has been an outrage since his unjust arrest 477 days ago, and it must end now -- that's "The Wall Street Journal." Even as Russia orchestrates its shameful sham trial, we continue to do everything we can to push for his immediate release and to state unequivocally Evan was doing his job as a journalist and journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now.

[04:20:06]

So throughout this, U.S. officials, "The Wall Street Journal," human rights groups have said this is an innocent man who is essentially being held hostage by Moscow in order to be traded in a future prisoner swap. The hope is that every day that this trial proceeds and reaches its conclusion, that that potential negotiation opens up and begins to bring Evan closer to being home.

But you have to remember, he's facing a very serious, potentially up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted.

PLEITGEN: Yes, absolutely. And it's one of those sort of unwritten almost rules, isn't it, that there has to be a conviction before any sort of exchange could take place, right? ABDELAZIZ: Absolutely. And there's one name, and you know this name very well, Vadim Krasikov, who is being held right now in Germany. This is a FSB operative who was imprisoned in Germany in 2019, allegedly for killing someone, a Chechen immigrant.

So there is a name that's already been circulated by Russian officials. Negotiations are already underway, we understand, from Sergey Lavrov earlier this week. But as you said, there is still that tick-boxing exercise.

And these negotiations, again, can take a very long time. They're very complicated. If this name is indeed the name that they want, and this is the individual you want, then you're talking about yet another government, the German government, of course, being involved in these negotiations. That takes time. That's complicated. But there is hope that Evan will be home at some point soon.

PLEITGEN: And the Russians have also said that all of this needs to happen behind closed doors, that none of this can come to the public light. Thank you very much, Salma, for that update.

North Korea and Russia are reaffirming their, quote, unwavering support for one another. And North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hosted an official Russian delegation led by the deputy defense minister in Pyongyang. State media reports they discussed the, quote, importance and necessity of military cooperation between the two countries. Kim also expressed his firm solidarity for Russia's war in Ukraine.

The meeting comes one month after the signing of a landmark defense pact that permits all available means to assist each other if either nation is attacked.

Now that he's accepted the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump is expected to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And that is according to two sources familiar with the plans who say the phone call is scheduled for later today.

Meanwhile, Mr. Zelenskyy is in London, where he met Prime Minister Keir Starmer a little over half an hour ago. You can see some pictures of them shaking hands there. Zelenskyy will be the first foreign leader to address a British cabinet meeting since 1997.

Turning now to Bangladesh, where dozens of people have reportedly been killed and hundreds more injured amid widespread unrest. Police in the capital say protesters carried out, quote, destructive activities on several government and telecommunications offices Thursday. The country imposed a nationwide blackout in response, leaving more than 170 million people without Internet.

Protesters are demanding an end to civil service job quotas that they claim are discriminatory in a country where nearly 20 percent of the population is out of work or school.

All right, we're returning now to breaking news that we're following the global cyber outages that have caused delays and issues at European airports affecting travel, the media and the London Stock Exchange website, among other things. And it seems likely that list is growing by the minutes.

Nigel Phair is a professor of cybersecurity at Monash University, and he joins us from Canberra in Australia. Sir, first of all, what do you make of all this? This is taking on such a global dimension. I know Australia is pretty affected as well.

NIGEL PHAIR, PROFESSOR OF CYBERSECURITY, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Absolutely, Australia has been heavily affected by that, and it's just coming to the close of our day on Friday. And a lot of organizations have not been able to function.

We're talking our big major banks, our airports, airliners, all across the whole critical infrastructure sector has been affected. Either no Internet connectivity or very limited availability.

PLEITGEN: How long do you think something like this could take? I know that Microsoft says that they've identified the problem. I guess they don't believe that there was any malicious activity going on. How long is this going to go on, do you think?

PHAIR: Yes, that's a great question. And, you know, it's good that at this stage it's not being detected as malicious. But, you know, we need to take an all hazards approach to the online environment when it comes to risk management.

I'm going to say, I think in the next 12 hours, most organizations will get some connectivity back.

[04:25:00]

But I think we're realistically looking at early next week for a full recovery of systems.

PLEITGEN: That's huge. I mean, 12 hours is an extremely long time because we've seen from places like China where we saw all those blue screens, all sorts of outages, the London Stock Exchange website. This is something that causes serious issues for public life all over the world.

PHAIR: Absolutely, we live and breathe our lives in the online environment and particularly through mobile smartphones, whether it's watching news like this through a device, whether it's doing our banking, whether it's using maps, social media and everything in between. We've just got so used to the commercial aspects of the online environment. You know, we're already several hours into this and we're seeing major organizations that just can't function at the moment.

So, you know, and still no remedy coming out of the big vendors saying, we think it's going to be this and we think we're going to have it fixed by a particular time.

PLEITGEN: So for those of us who are not cybersecurity experts or in general, not, you know, great with tech, why does it take so long to fix this? We always have this vision that maybe, you know, you just need to turn it off and on and maybe it'll reboot itself. But it obviously takes a long time to find the problem and then actually deal with it.

PHAIR: Yes, and absolutely, I always favor the turn it off, turn it back on scenario in my day-to-day life for sure. But if it has been an update that's come through either the crowdsource cybersecurity platform subsequently through Microsoft, it'll be lines of code that haven't been written correctly or there might be a glitch in it. They need to go back and review all those pieces of code, all that software upgrade.

The next step is they need to put it into a test environment. They need to test it from all angles before we even start thinking about putting it into a production environment where a real-life case, whether it be an airline or a bank or something major like that, will be prepared to accept that update. And that's where the time is going to take because these organizations are going to be super wary about doing any updates now until it's really verified as being stable.

PLEITGEN: And we're obviously seeing the big impact that all of this is having. If anything, what could be lessons learned from something like this? Are there ways to sort of foolproof the system? Are there ways to have a backup that maybe this wouldn't have such a great impact? What are things that could be done?

PHAIR: I think the lessons to be learned out of this start with the Risk and Audit Committee at the Board of Directors. And they need to be playing out all these different scenarios. So while the likelihood of this is pretty minimal, the consequences are huge.

So I would like to think they would look at not just the cybersecurity aspects of the lack of availability of the internet to their customers and business operations, but an all-hazards approach. You know, playing out scenarios, what happens when there isn't the internet? How do we send staff home to work off laptops, off mobile devices, anything and everything?

Perhaps a sidewalk where a tractor has dug up the cable, all those sorts of scenarios to work out. If this happens again, how do we work around that? And what do we do to keep our operations running as best we can?

PLEITGEN: Do you think something like this happens because, you know, I mentioned the Board of Directors, for instance, because maybe managers become complacent? Do you think it happens because there's not enough specialists there? Do you think there's not enough risk awareness maybe on the part of companies like this?

PHAIR: I think it all comes down to risk awareness, yes. We all love the good of internet technologies, but organizations, whilst many are doing a much better job, many organizations are still not going through fundamental risk assessment of what could happen. So we all want the good, we're not necessarily investing in the bad.

And we've learned today, this is a major bad.

PLEITGEN: Nigel Phair, thank you very much for joining us from Canberra in Australia. I hope those tech issues get sorted out very quickly in your part of the world and in our part of the world as well. Thank you very much.

And we'll have much more on this global IT outage after a short break.

Also, the latest on the fallout over Donald Trump's rally assassination attempts. Coming up.