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Democratic Lawmakers Urge Biden to Exit Race; New Delays Possible from Global Tech Outage; Conscription of Unorthodox Jews Begins Sunday; Investigators Trace Shooter's Pre-Rally Moments; Hackers Targeting People Desperate for Solutions; "The WSJ"'s Evan Gershkovich Gets 16-Year Sentence in Russia; Heat Wave in Western U.S. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired July 20, 2024 - 03:00   ET

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

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Welcome to all you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

Calls to step aside; more and more Democrats are saying U.S. President Joe Biden should end his bid for reelection.

A software update causes a massive technology outage around the world. We'll, look at how it happened and when things could get back to normal.

And some ultraorthodox Jews in Israel will be called up to the military as soon as Sunday. A reaction on this controversial decision ahead.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from Atlanta this is CNN NEWSROOM with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: U.S. President Joe Biden is vowing to stay in the race despite a growing list of fellow Democrats telling him to drop out. He says he looks forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week after recovering from COVID.

But more than 30 Democratic lawmakers are now publicly urging him to step aside, including a dozen on Friday alone. A source says the president is seething at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, since some of her close allies are joining the calls. Here's what Illinois congressman Sean Casten told CNN earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. SEAN CASTEN (D-IL): The narrative since the debate has been how is President Biden going to shift the focus onto his record and away from the slips of the tongue. And people are nervous about that. And the polls that folks are doing, that they're seeing, that we've

seen -- and I've not seen anything from the White House -- suggest that if we're going to put our best foot forward, we need to make a change. And that makes us really sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: CNN's MJ Lee has details from the White House.

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MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The Biden campaign coming out in full force on Friday to insist that President Joe Biden is not going anywhere.

The Biden campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, saying on television, absolutely, the president is staying in the race. The campaign also sending out a memo saying that there is simply no alternative plan right now to President Biden.

And also in a statement himself, the president saying that he is looking forward to getting back out on the campaign trail, presumably once he has recovered from COVID. He's currently the isolating in Rehoboth.

That defiance, of course, is in such stark contrast from the panic that is really starting to set in across the Democratic Party. Just today, on Friday, we saw Democrats coming out in droves to say that they think that President Biden needs to get out of the race.

As of Friday night, there were more than 30 congressional Democrats who had gone public. We also know that many in the upper ranks of the White House and the campaign, privately at this point, believe that the president needs to get out of the race, not to mention problems in terms of money.

We have heard from a number of major donors that have said that they are simply not going to be writing checks to the Biden campaign anymore so long as President Biden remains at the top of the ticket.

But as for right now, the campaign is insisting that they were emboldened by what they saw this week at the Republican National Convention, including former president Donald Trump's speech Thursday night at the RNC.

Campaign officials are saying that that speech really showed that former president Donald Trump is the exact same as back in 2016, as in 2020, that he is all about himself and that the party really showed no agenda or vision for the future.

So at this moment in time, despite the growing pressure, President Biden is making clear that he is staying in the race -- MJ Lee, CNN, at the White House.

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BRUNHUBER: Caroline Heldman is a Democratic strategist and political scientist and a professor of critical theory and social justice. And she joins us now from Los Angeles.

Thanks so much for being here with us. So listen, since last time you and I spoke, more Democrats, more junior and senior, are now asking President Biden to leave. Those who back Biden say it's just the media and the elites who are panicking and we can't take the polls as a given.

Are you buying that argument?

CAROLINE HELDMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I'm not buying that argument. These are folks who have supported the president, President Biden, for quite some time.

[03:05:00]

And they are responding to what the public is saying. And what the public is saying, specifically Democrats, two-thirds of them think that Biden should step aside. As you noted, you know, 12 more Democrats came forward on Friday, calling for him to step aside.

These are not people who dislike Joe Biden. These are people who have supported him, that definitely supported him in 2020. But they're looking at the tea leaves. They are looking at the fact that states like Minnesota and New Mexico and Virginia that Biden easily won in 2020 are now contested, are now in play.

They are looking at the fact that he is -- he is trailing Trump in all seven key swing states. He's losing ground in 14 states and only about one in four Americans think that Biden at this point is mentally or physically fit to run for this office.

So I think that the Democratic Party is responding to actually what the American voters are saying.

BRUNHUBER: One of the problems here for Democrats is the timing. Obviously the longer this drags on, the less time they have to coalesce around a potential new candidate.

One governor, who, who's in touch with the campaign told CNN, quote, "The next 72 hours are big."

But I mean that's kind of what we were hearing last week before the assassination attempt. I mean, they're running out of time here.

HELDMAN: Absolutely.

They're running out of time. And you saw this new PAC pass the torch that's running ads in Rehoboth, which is where Biden is recovering from COVID over the weekend, and also in D.C. The pressure though is building. And you're right, time is short, 108 days. There's just no good path forward for the Democratic Party. They either put up a candidate who has approval ratings that are under

40 percent and no modern president has won with those approval ratings. They either put him up or they put in another candidate quickly. And that's a long shot too.

The Democratic Party is not in a good position to win in November.

BRUNHUBER: Perhaps surprisingly, many of those who are backing Biden, the most have been young progressives, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yesterday, she admitted that the president is, quote, "very old" but pivoting to a new pick like the vice president would be a mistake, in her words. Here she is.

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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): If you think that's going to be an easy transition, I'm here to tell you that a huge amount (sic) of the donor class and a huge amount (sic) of these elites and a huge amount (sic) of these folks in these rooms that I see, that are pushing for President Biden to not be the nominee, also are not interested in seeing the vice president being the nominee.

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BRUNHUBER: All right. So I have two questions here for you. I'll ask you the first part here.

What do you make of the support that Biden's getting from some of these younger progressives?

Does that surprise you?

HELDMAN: It does surprise me, especially given the criticism of what Biden has done in Gaza, which is a driving force.

And even though he passed the largest environmental policy, a lot of young people don't give him credit on that. I mean when you look at polls, they just don't see that in him and that's a top priority issue.

So it is interesting to see more progressive, younger candidates supporting him. Of course, it's a win-win. They don't lose anything if he steps aside. And they've supported him, it doesn't harm them.

You really see the folks who are maybe going to lose their House seats or in jeopardy of that coming forward because there is a big concern, as Pelosi pointed out, that Biden could be a drag on the House races.

BRUNHUBER: All right. And then the second part of this is specifically, what do you make of her comments there, that a pivot to the vice president would be difficult?

I mean, it does reflect some of our reporting that some of these donors do in fact want an open process and not simply to appoint, Harris.

HELDMAN: Yes, Kim, she's right.

It's just at this point, this late in the game, there's no good path forward. So if you skip over Harris, then you'll disaffect some of the core voting members, these stalwart Democrats.

You're going to disaffect women, you're especially going to disaffect women of color, Black women in particular.

If you have an open primary and it becomes a bit of a bloodbath that's happening in August and it's so late in the game that, even if you get a candidate -- let's say it's not Harris, it's Shapiro (ph), who's been relatively untested on the national stage, it's going to take a while for voters to get to know him.

So there's no, again, no good path forward here. Harris though, there are a couple of reasons to select her. The money would stay with her. So the Biden-Harris money would stay with her. There wouldn't be an issue transferring that over.

And also, they could really picture as being a first, the first woman president, the first Indian American president.

So I think that would be very appealing to many members of the Democratic Party; less so independents.

BRUNHUBER: All right.

We'll, have to leave it there. Pleasure to have you on again, Caroline Heldman. Thank you so much.

HELDMAN: Thank you. Kim.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Airlines and hospitals around the world are warning the delays and frustrations from Friday's global tech outage aren't over yet.

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One tech expert says it's the biggest outage ever.

A faulty software update to some Windows computers on Friday grounded more than 3,000 flights in the U.S. alone, delayed surgeries and shut down some banks. The company behind it, CrowdStrike, says it has deployed a fix.

But it could take a while to be applied to all of the computers affected. And around the world there are still a backlog of passengers, pilots, flight crews and planes. Our Tom Foreman has more on what happened and how it's being fixed.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel like I'm being completely screwed over. This is bull crap. TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As airports and trains, hospitals and emergency services, media, retailers, delivery companies and even the U.S. space program grappled with a global cyber outage, a stunning admission, a single glitch and a software update from the cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, triggered the whole mess.

GEORGE KURTZ, FOUNDER & CEO, CROWDSTRIKE: We identify this very quickly and remediate it the issue. And as systems come back online, as they're rebooted, they're coming up and -- and they're working.

FOREMAN (voice-over): This is how it happened. CrowdStrike is a multibillion dollar cybersecurity firm, which helps many Fortune 500 companies protect their Microsoft operating systems from hackers and viruses that requires constant updates. And normally when one is deployed --

MIKE DRISCOLL, FORMER FBI AGENT: It will be tested extensively. And they will work widely with the providers like Microsoft and other organizations that run these platforms to make sure it is compatible with these networks.

FOREMAN (voice-over): But this update was faulty, causing infected computers around the planet to shut down. Dave DeWalt is a top expert in the field. He was up all night helping get them back online.

DAVE DEWALT, FOUNDER & CEO, NIGHTDRAGON: CrowdStrike was doing everything in its power to stop threats from occurring by doing the updates. But at the same time, you know, the quality control broke down and we ended up with what we had happen.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Government Services far and wide were affected by the outage, including in the U.S, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, Social Security and even some state 9-1-1 systems. At the White House, the fact they could all be affected by one mistake is raising caution flags.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: This digitization and technology has brought massive benefits. But every technology has its downsides.

FOREMAN (voice-over): As it is in New York, one of the famous billboards of Times Square was blanked by the problem. In Paris, final preparation for the Olympics were rattled. And all over --

DEWALT: The banking industry and everything else a couple -- couple more hours, you know, maybe the rest of the day and will -- will be returned.

FOREMAN (voice-over): -- disputes about how long it will take to get back to normal.

VICTORIA BAINES, GRESHAM COLLEGE: There are estimates that this is going to take some days, perhaps even weeks to fully recover from the impact.

FOREMAN: Analysts call it a testament to CrowdStrike that so many governments and corporations are relying on the company. But they also say it may be a warning that perhaps there should be some other options if one mistake can cause so much trouble -- Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: And CNN's Hanako Montgomery is live in Tokyo with the latest on the outage and its global impact.

So Hanako, what is the latest on the outage and how long might it take to get everything back to normal?

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In terms of what we've heard right the latest updates that we've heard about this global tech outage, we know that some airlines and airports and also some businesses are returning to normal, that they have recovered from this massive tech glitch.

But it is also still affecting many travelers' flights. There are summer holiday plans. We also know according to experts that this issue could take days, if not weeks, to fully recover from globally.

Now the reason for that is because the heart of this outage runs really, really deep. Essentially, in order to get these computers to get these systems back and running again, you have to manually reboot every single affected device. Now that is a massive undertaking.

If you're a Fortune 500 company like Tom mentioned there earlier or an airline for instance, then you might have the tech support or the I.T. teams to help you manually reboot all your devices.

But if you're a smaller company, a smaller business, you might not have that support, you might not have those resources, which is why experts fear that it could take days if not weeks for the whole world to fully recover.

Now Kim, experts are also concerned and are saying that this issue is compounded by the fact that some of the servers that contain very essential information to address this issue at hand are themselves crashing and rebooting. So it's a catch-22 situation.

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Where you cannot solve the initial problem because you don't have the solution in your hands.

Now in terms of looking ahead and what the future holds, in terms of this global tech outage, the CrowdStrike CEO has apologized and has, of course, promised full transparency to understand why this software update led to such a massive tech glitch.

The CEO has also said that they are going to take any necessary steps to ensure that something of this nature won't happen again in the future. What those steps are, he hasn't articulated in so many words.

But what we do know and what this tech, which has highlighted, are the issues that we have with our global technology infrastructure, where one single mistake can lead to massive repercussions around the world.

BRUNHUBER: Which is why this probably isn't the last time we see something like this. Hanako Montgomery, live in Tokyo. Thank you so much.

All right. Still ahead, signs of hope for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deals. The U.S. secretary of state offers his view on the negotiations ahead of a key visit from Israel's prime minister.

Plus, Israel is set to begin drafting ultraorthodox Jews into military service for the first time in the country's history. Why the move is so controversial on that after the break, stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Israel's prime minister is set to travel to Washington this weekend as negotiators continue to hash out the details of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a series of meetings, including with President Biden and various U.S. lawmakers. He'll address Congress on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the top U.S. diplomat expressed strong optimism about the prospect of a deal. Secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Friday that negotiators are, in his words, "nearing the goal line" but he acknowledged the final details are often the hardest.

The U.N. secretary general is reiterating the urgent need for a two- state solution after the top U.N. court issued a landmark opinion. The International Court of Justice says Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank and the occupation of East Jerusalem are illegal.

The opinion isn't legally binding but the Palestinian Authority welcomed the court's opinion. Israel's prime minister and other politicians rejected the court's decision, with Netanyahu saying, quote, "The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land."

One thousand ultraorthodox Jews are set to receive their conscription orders from the Israeli military starting Sunday. Israel's defense ministry says it will be the first of three waves of conscription notices. Originally some 3,000 warrants were set to go out to Haredi Jews between the ages of 18 and 26.

But the conscription plan sparked fierce protests since the ultraorthodox have traditionally been exempt from military service. Israel's supreme court ruled last month, they must participate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) And joining me now from Israel is Ofer Shelah, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and a former member of the Knesset.

Thank you so much for being here with us. So this is obviously a hugely contentious issue.

Just to start with, do you expect to see protests this weekend?

OFER SHELAH, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES: I don't know about the weekend, you know, this is the Shabbat here in Israel and they are the unorthodox class of conservatives of Shabbat.

But yes, once those conscription order do come out and are sent. And it's not clear right now, who they'll be sent to.

But I -- we do expect protests within the Haredi community.

Yes.

BRUNHUBER: This has been a longstanding fight and neither side is happy.

I mean, those who wanted to see the burden shared equally or are outraged at the low number of ultraorthodox who will be conscripted, a way lower ratio than the population at large.

So how can they justify that?

SHELAH: Look, the debate has been going on, as he said, Kim, the debate's been going on for many years.

It's been, I think the first appeal to the supreme court was somewhere in the '80s, so it's like 40 year debate, right now.

But things have changed dramatically since October 7th, since the attack on Israel and the fact that they've been at war for over nine months now with close to 700 casualties and thousands of wounded and so on.

And the fact that the ultraorthodox do not share the burden, which was a moral and, if you want, a legal question before that has now become a very tangible thing. And we are, we are talking about actual, you know, a country at war.

And the -- a war which do not see the end to in the coming months. So this now is not only a question of what does being an Israeli citizen entail and are the burden -- are the same laws, do they apply equally to all people?

It's a question of the IDF's real human resources need, the fact that we do need people to fill in the ranks to help the IDF fulfill its missions. When we are fighting the war actually vis-a-vis the whole so-called axis of resistance led by Iran. And now it's a very material question that the ultraorthodox, you got

to understand, we're talking about one in six of would be conscripts every year. So those people now in the mind, in the majority of Israelis, saying that they need to be there for security reasons, not only for moral reasons, if you will.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, and the ultraorthodox community has grown significantly.

Sort of a strange question but how suitable are the ultraorthodox to be soldiers?

I mean, they have special requirements and so on.

So how do you see them actually being integrated?

SHELAH: Very good question.

[03:25:00]

Because our other things can -- as a country -- is that we allow the schools, the shivas that they learned in, to not include subjects and subject matter that is essential, not only for so being a soldier but all the -- also to seek a good place in the job market and so on.

So I think at first we are talking about both new conscripts and also people who are exempt, who could be enlisted into reserve duty as, as all other Israelis are, to serve in as sentries, to be in units that will keep order and give first response in just civilian communities.

And this we can do in the thousands. And we've issued the paper at the INSS that we think it needs both the means and the ability of the IDF to conscript or call into duty amounts to thousands in this recruitment year.

We started July 1st and I think this is really possible, even given what you've alluded to.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, with Israel's military needs growing and the ultraorthodox population growing as well, it will be interesting to see how this is carried out in the days and months, years ahead. Afer Shelah in Israel, thank you so much for being here with us.

SHELAH: Thank you, Kim. Thanks for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Hackers appear to have taken over the official websites of Bangladesh's prime minister, the national police and the central bank.

Now this comes as Bangladesh is escalating its crackdown on continuing nationwide unrest. The government imposed a curfew and deployed military forces on Friday after weeks of student led protests took a deadly and violent turn in recent days.

Dozens have reportedly been killed and hundreds injured in clashes between demonstrators and police. The students are demanding an end to the country's civil service jobs quota system, which they claim is discriminatory and favors the ruling party.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. For our viewers here in North America, I'll have more news in just a moment. For our international viewers, "INSIDE AFRICA" is next.

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BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to all you watching us here in the United States and Canada.

I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

U.S. President Joe Biden is battling new calls from members of his own party to drop out of the race. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers are now publicly urging him to step aside, including a dozen new names on Friday alone.

But Biden isn't budging. He says he looks forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week after recovering from COVID.

But what would happen if Democrats had to replace President Biden on the ballot just weeks before their convention?

Well, CNN's Brian Todd has that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president's team digging in, vowing to stay in the race despite dozens of Democratic lawmakers and party leaders suggesting otherwise. But if Joe Biden, in the days or weeks ahead, were to decide to quit the race before the Democratic convention in late August. The process for replacing him is uncertain and somewhat messy.

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: The primaries are over, the caucuses are over, you can't redo the primaries or caucuses. You can't elect new delegates.

TODD (voice-over): If Biden steps decide before the convention, it could turn the convention itself into a free-for-all, where at least make it full of intrigue. Names of replacements could be put forward and the roughly 3,900 Democratic delegates from across the country could decide who to vote for as the nominee.

SABATO: Oh, it's up to the delegates. In the end, it's up to them.

TODD (voice-over): President Biden won almost all of those 3,900 delegates in the primaries. But does he have control over who they support if he's out of the race?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": It's not like Joe Biden can say, OK, I'm stepping down. All of you delegates that signed on for me half to now support this other candidate but that's not how it works. Those delegates would essentially be free to move and the way they want.

TODD (voice-over): Like the days of old backroom deals and lobbying could prevail at the convention as potential nominees tried to convince the delegates to get behind them.

In the end, how many of the 3,900 delegates would a candidate?

You have to win at the convention to get the nomination?

ELAINE KAMARCK, MEMBER, DNC RULES AND BYLAWS COMMITTEE: Ultimately, they would have to convince somewhat somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 plus Democratic delegates to vote for them on a roll call vote.

TODD (voice-over): There are also additional so-called superdelegates. About 700 of them, comprised (sic) of party insiders and elected officials, who could also be allowed to join in the voting. It would all mean a late start for any candidate, including in the money race.

If Vice President Kamala Harris won the nomination, she would presumably be able to use Biden's campaign war chest because her name is on all the filings. But any other candidate may have to raise their own money.

TODD: What happens if President Biden for some reason leaves the race after the Democratic convention?

Experts say in that unlikely event, the Democratic National Committee would convene and select the Democratic nominee for president on its own -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, plan to hold their first joint rally in Michigan later today. And Vance will be traveling to the events aboard his own campaign plane.

Sources tell CNN the Trump campaign gave the Ohio senator a private Boeing 737 after he was officially announced as the V.P. choice. Vance's first trip on new plane was on a flight from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Cincinnati, Ohio, on Friday morning.

We're learning more about the pre rally movements of would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, though his motive for carrying out the shooting is still no clearer. CNN's Kyung Lah has details.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hours before the attempted assassination, Thomas Crooks begins his day scoping out the rally site, sources tell CNN.

He arrives mid-morning and stays for 70 minutes and drives more than an hour back home, where he picks up an AR type rifle. His father later tells authorities he thought Crooks was going to the shooting range.

Crooks buys ammunition at a local gun shop and travels back to the rally site; 5:10 pm local police first spot Crooks. Around the same time he's seen in this video obtained by CNN affiliate WTAE walking outside the perimeter of the rally in front of the building he would later climb.

At 5:33 pm, the motorcade for former president Donald Trump arrives as the eager crowd awaits.

About 15 minutes later, Pennsylvania State Police notified the Secret Service of a suspicious person.

[03:35:00]

They share a photo of Crooks. Counter snipers are alerted, according to a congressional briefing by law enforcement. But officers lose sight of him.

Moments before Trump walks out, counter snipers can be seen facing opposite directions. Trump takes the stage at 6:02 pm. His team was not informed of the suspicious sighting.

Two minutes before the first shot, the counter-sniper on the building closest to the shooter's location adjusts his position.

On the ground outside the perimeter, people start reacting acting to movement on the roof of a nearby building. A uniformed officer can be seen walking toward the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he's on top of the roof. There he is, right there.

OK, see him?

He's laying down.

LAH (voice-over): About 10 seconds later, a separate counter sniper team on the southern building turns around 180 degrees to face the shooter's building. One the ground, people alert law enforcement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (OFF MIKE COMMENTS).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (OFF MIKE COMMENTS).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) right on the roof.

LAH (voice-over): Just seconds later, another video shows an officer walking backwards, apparently looking up. A man approaches and points to the shooter's location.

The officer turns and walks out of frame. At the same time two counter sniper teams are captured in these photos aiming in the direction of the shooter. Realizing the danger, the crowd outside the perimeter starts rushing away.

On the other side of the field, a counter-sniper can be seen peering through his scope at the direction of the building where the shooter is.

TRUMP: What happened?

LAH (voice-over): Shots are fired at 6:11 pm. Trump is injured. The gunman is taken out seconds later. On his body, law enforcement find a remote transmitter to detonate explosives that were later discovered in his car, along with a drone, a tactical vest and more ammo.

LAH: Investigators also found the shooter's cell phone on his body. It had a screenshot of the livestream of the rally. It was taken 10 minutes before the shooting.

And the search history of the cell phone showed that he had looked up articles about prominent U.S. politicians, both Democrats and Republicans -- Kyung Lah, CNN, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: All right.

I want to give you an update on one of our top stories. Many airlines, hospitals and banks around the world are still working to recover after Friday's massive tech outage. Nearly 700 U.S. flights have already been canceled for Saturday.

But United Airlines says most of its systems have recovered and some Asian airlines say their operations are gradually being restored. The company responsible for the disruption, CrowdStrike, says a fix has been deployed. CrowdStrike is promising full transparency and says they're taking steps to make sure it never happens again.

Victoria Baines joins us now from London. She's a professor of information technology at Gresham College in London.

Thank you so much for being here with us. So let's start with where we are right now. For those of us who are maybe a little less tech savvy, the company says, it's fixed the glitch.

So why aren't things already back to normal?

And how long might that take?

BAINES: Well, Kim, we know that there has been an error in one of CrowdStrike's cybersecurity products.

It's called Falcon. It's antivirus software. And the company hasn't yet disclosed the root cause. And so cybersecurity experts around the world are analyzing that code. They're analyzing the updates.

There are suggestions that just one file may have been packaged incorrectly and even that the error amounts to a single line of computer code. So they've already issued a patch for this glitch. They've already issued a fix.

But the machines that are already affected -- and given that CrowdStrike has 29,000 customers, large organizations around the world -- the machines already affected run into the millions. We are expecting and they will have to be fixed manually.

We joke about turning the machine on and off again or off and on again. That's exactly what needs to happen in this case. And that's what's going to take the time. I.T. officers around the world are now having to reboot machines to the order of millions to get things back up and running.

BRUNHUBER: Just amazing, possibly one line of code creating such huge problems around the world. Another problem, the U.S. cybersecurity agency said that criminals are, quote, "taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity."

I mean, how widespread do you think that threat is and what should we be on the lookout for?

BAINES: We should expect that threat to be very widespread and even just for us as consumers.

[03:40:00]

It's not just affecting large organizations. I've been tracking the cybercriminals for the last 20 years and looking at what they use. A great example of this is when Michael Jackson died, all of a sudden, there was Michael Jackson related spam.

As many of your viewers will know, during COVID, we all had lots of coronavirus related spam and phishing scams. We should expect exactly the same. And we are starting to see that. We're starting to see web domains, so websites being registered, related to CrowdStrike that clearly don't belong to the legitimate company.

So what kind of threats might we see?

Well, for instance, we might get an email saying that we've been affected by the CrowdStrike glitch, we need to go to this website and download this piece of software.

Now look, the basic principles for cybersecurity still apply. If you get an email that you are not expecting, even if it looks really, really plausible, just take a minute, check where that email is really trying to send you. Because the chances are there is a very real chance that they will be sending you to a dodgy website.

BRUNHUBER: Great advice there. It's just absolutely scary. So let's take a step back.

Are you surprised that something like this could happen, that a single glitch could have so many repercussions around the world?

BAINES: We're surprised until it happens, right?

So I would be the first to admit that, yesterday morning when we woke up London time, we all expected this to be Russia or North Korea, countries that have formed for trying to either disable our critical infrastructure or to try and extort money out of us.

That's exactly what happens in 2017 with the WannaCry ransomware attack that, in the U.K., disabled some systems in the National Health Service. That actually wasn't intended to do exactly that damage to critical infrastructure. It was designed to extort money from systems that weren't properly patched.

You know, code is written by humans at least for now. More and more artificial intelligence is coming into the mix. And that's quite an interesting consideration as to whether that will actually reduce human error and therefore reduce the number of glitches.

But when it comes down to it, code is written by humans. It should be checked, it should be tested certainly in a test environment before it goes to market, before it gets deployed in the wild.

And there will be some very serious questions asked in CrowdStrike and of CrowdStrike, I would imagine, by national cybersecurity agencies about why this was allowed to go to market with testing. But as soon as something like this happens, you know, logically, you break it down and you think, well, yes, of course, this can happen.

An engineer has written this. It's either been through a process or it's been checked correctly and it's been tested correctly or it hasn't. And sometimes this stuff slips through the net.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, just underscores how intertwined our economy is and how reliant we are on just a few big companies. Certainly as you say, there should be more failsafes. We'll have to leave it there, Victoria Baines in London. Thank you so much.

"The Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in Russia but there's speculation that Moscow has other plans for him and the sentencing was just the first step. We will explain.

Plus where the Donald Trump has agreed to meet face-to-face with Ukraine's president and talk about how to achieve peace after more than two years of war. That and more coming up, stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: "The Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to spend the next 16 years in a Russian prison.

U.S. officials say his arrest and his trial were sham, is raising questions about whether Moscow wants to use him as a bargaining chip in a possible prisoner swap. Fred Pleitgen has more.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): A glimpse inside the courtroom shows American Journalist Evan Gershkovich looking on from a glass cage, as a judge reads his sentence, 16 years in a Russian maximum security penal colony on espionage charges.

Arrested over a year ago in the city of Yekaterinburg while reporting for "The Wall Street Journal," the American was accused of spying for the CIA, charges that thirty-two-year-old denies.

Friday's verdict, slammed by his employer as a, quote, disgrace, full sham conviction.

The short, secretive three-week trial garnered widespread condemnation in the West. President Joe Biden saying, quote, journalism is not a crime.

Gershkovich, seen here at the start of his trial last month, smiling occasionally, hands on hips with a shaved head. The first but not the last American journalist detained in Russia since the Cold War.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual Russian the American citizen, employed by Radio Free Europe, arrested more than a year ago while visiting family.

Also convicted on espionage charges, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, serving 16-year prison sentence, all Americans the U.S. is determined to bring home.

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: When it comes to Evan, when it comes to Paul Whelan and Russia, other Americans, we're working at quite literally every day, looking to see what we can do to get them home.

PLEITGEN: The Kremlin accused by many U.S. and Western officials for allegedly using Americans as bargaining chips for potential prisoner swaps. But Russia insists that Gershkovich charges are not political with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying, there is, quote, irrefutable evidence in the case. No evidence has been offered publicly, however.

Gershkovich has the right to appeal the ruling but moving forward, his best hope just might be a prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, London.

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BRUNHUBER: Donald Trump has agreed to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to talk face-to-face about ways to get peace in Ukraine. That's according to Zelenskyy himself, who spoke with Trump on the phone Friday.

And that's a day after Trump formally became the Republican presidential pick. Zelenskyy says they agreed to discuss possible steps forward toward a fair and lasting peace. The Ukrainian leader says he also condemned the recent assassination attempt against Trump and said Kyiv is grateful for U.S. military support.

All right. Just ahead, extreme weather across the U.S. this weekend. The latest forecast after the break, please stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Well, it's a grab bag of extreme weather across the U.S. this weekend, ranging from heat waves to floods.

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BRUNHUBER: Ireland's Shane Lowry, the 2019 Open champion, shot a two under 69 to take the midway lead at 7 under in this year's tournament at Royal Troon. Wildfire (ph) Dan Brown from Yorkshire slipped a second along fellow Englishman Justin Rose at five-under.

World number one Scottie Scheffler maintained a steady pace with a one under par 70 for the second day running to loom ominously in fourth place at two under. But there was disappointment for big names Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who both missed the cut after finishing well over par.

It's less than a week now until the start of the Paris Olympics. Next Friday's opening ceremony will take place on and next to the River Seine rather than in the usual stadium. Organizers say it will be a, quote, "joyful, daring, atypical show," in which artists and athletes will together celebrate Paris, France, and the Games.

Dozens of boats will carry athletes and performers along a four mile or six kilometer route and a show that will last nearly four hours and culminate in arrival at the Eiffel Tower.

The global tech outage shut down a large number of companies and organizations around the world. One company that was still operating had a sweet response. Donut maker Krispy Kreme offered a free original glazed doughnut to each customer at certain U.S. locations.

Now in this Instagram post, the company called it "a sweetware update." Krispy Kreme frequently gives away doughnuts or offers deep discounts during major holidays or events.

I'm Kim Brunhuber. Thanks so much for joining me this hour. Fred Pleitgen picks up our coverage from London after this.