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Democratic Lawmakers Urge Biden to Exit Race; New Delays Possible from Global Tech Outage; Security Lapses in Deadly Tel Aviv Drone Attack; Zelenskyy Pushes for More Leeway on Strikes; "The WSJ"'s Evan Gershkovich Gets 16-Year Sentence in Russia. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired July 20, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Fred Pleitgen right here in London. And here is what's ahead on CNN NEWSROOM.
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PLEITGEN (voice-over): President Biden remains defiant as calls for him to step aside grow louder. We will tell you who's joining the chorus and what the White House has to say.
Russia sentences American journalist Evan Gershkovich for espionage. Why Washington calls the conviction, quote, "a sham."
And a cyber meltdown around the world, from airlines to banks. We're learning what happened and how long it could take before things get back to normal.
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PLEITGEN: Our top story, U.S. President Joe Biden is vowing to stay in the race despite a growing list of fellow Democrats telling him to drop out. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers are now publicly urging him to step aside. And that includes a dozen on Friday alone.
A source says the president is, quote, "seething" at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi since some of her close allies are joining the calls. Earlier, legendary journalist Carl Bernstein talked to CNN about a Zoom meeting involving Biden's top donors who are also pushing for his replacement.
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CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They said they wanted an open process in which Kamala Harris would not be, quote, "anointed," that she would have to compete to be the presidential nominee along with everybody else.
Somewhere along the proposal put forth by James Carville, in which there would be a kind of open primary, preparatory to the convention, in which the presidential nominee would be chosen.
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PLEITGEN: Now we're also learning that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is not discouraging colleagues from continuing to speak out against Biden's candidacy. But that's not stopping the president.
He says he looks forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week, even as Democrats weigh the options ahead of their convention in about a month. CNN's MJ Lee has the 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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PLEITGEN: Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor of government at the University of Essex. She joins us now from Colchester right here in England.
And Natasha, I mean, all this seems to be moving in an almost inevitable direction.
How much longer do you think President Biden can hold on?
NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: It's really hard to say because there's very different messages. What he's saying to the public, that he's not going to step down, that really he is more resolute than ever and that he's going to remain in the campaign.
[04:05:02]
But we're hearing privately that there is just an onslaught of pressure on him. As the report already mentioned, from donors but from top Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, talking already about having some kind of open process for whoever the next candidate is going to be.
And "The New York Times" reported that he is starting to consider these things. His campaign had already even looked to how Kamala Harris would pull against Trump and just to mention again, he wouldn't step down before Wednesday.
And that was because "The New York Times" reported that Netanyahu's visit will take place then and he wouldn't want to give the prime minister of Israel the satisfaction of knowing that he was stepping down and that was what they had said.
But I could imagine that, after that visit, because you have the convention in August 19th, there isn't a lot of time for the Democrats to come together with some kind of candidate. They want to be united behind a candidate.
And if they're going to go through with some sort of like open primary process, there's not a lot of time to get that done. And that would be a big contrast to what happened at the Republican convention, where they are completely united behind Donald Trump.
So there's mounting pressure. Some of it even coming from former president Barack Obama, which, of course, has irked Biden.
But he's facing it on all sides of -- from donors, from party members that are in the higher echelons of the party.
And from Congress, men and women themselves.
PLEITGEN: I think we need to talk about the damage that all this is causing to the Democratic Party but also, of course, to any chances they could have retaking, for instance, the House. They're not talking about the issues that Republicans seem to be in lockstep.
You're absolutely right.
How much damage is this causing to the party?
LINDSTAEDT: Well, it's doing huge damage because actually the Biden administration has accomplished a lot, whether it be in fighting child poverty, investing in infrastructure, in having very low unemployment rates and economic growth and just getting the country out of the pandemic.
So these should be the issues that Democrats should be touting and also warning about what a Trump presidency means to democracy, to women's reproductive rights, to core issues that are important to Democratic voters and possibly independent voters.
Instead, the entire conversation is about Biden's age and they haven't been able to shake this and they don't, as I mentioned, they don't appear united. They appear to be in complete disarray. And that isn't a good signal to the American public about how they're going to govern.
PLEITGEN: And then, of course, there is the question that, if President Biden steps aside, is Kamala Harris ready?
Does she have the support in the party?
Is there going to be some sort of open process?
How long could that take?
There's so many unknowns.
LINDSTAEDT: True.
And as I mentioned, Nancy Pelosi had talked about an open process, having some kind of primary so that it's not some kind of decision that takes place in a back room, some private deal that might not be that popular with voters.
I think that Democrats think that while Harris could be potentially a really good choice -- 4 million people had voted in the primary process for her as part of the ticket -- that she shouldn't automatically get this.
Now there are of course questions about, well, what does that mean for the 91 million in Biden's campaign war chest?
And of course, it would be easier to transfer it to her. But that being said, the Democrats want the candidate that they think has the best chance of winning. And they're going to have to really move quickly to figure out who
that's going to be. It might end up being Harris because she has the experience. She's also popular with minority voters and with female voters.
And it may irk or annoy some minority voters, that she was just sort of pushed aside. But as Pelosi had mentioned, a open process might benefit her and give her more legitimacy, if she does end up winning, if Biden steps down.
PLEITGEN: Yes, certainly some key times coming up for the Democrats. Natasha Lindstaedt in Colchester, England. Thank you very much.
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PLEITGEN: And, of course, another major story for you that we're following. Airlines and hospitals around the world are warning of possible continued delays this weekend because of Friday's major global tech outage.
One tech expert says it's the biggest outage ever. On Friday, more than 3,000 U.S. flights were canceled and thousands more were delayed. At the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing, traffic was backed up because vehicles had to be processed manually.
And the reason for all this was, of course, a faulty software update pushed to some Windows computers. The company behind it, CrowdStrike, says it has deployed a fix but that could take a while to be applied to the millions of computers affected around the world.
CrowdStrike is based in Texas and was launched in 2011. Its software is used by numerous Fortune 500 companies, including of course, Microsoft.
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The company also provides cyber attack investigations. In 2016, it was hired to look at the Russian hacking of U.S. Democratic National Committee computers. CNN's Hanako Montgomery is live in Tokyo with the latest on the outage's lingering impact.
Hanako, how big an issue is this and how much trouble are companies having getting fully back online?
HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Friday, in the past few hours, we are hearing some companies begin to recover after seeing a massive, massive tech outage on Friday. In Asia, in this region, specifically, we saw the brunt of the impact among airlines and essentially airports as they couldn't process people's check-ins.
We also couldn't see them processing new bookings. People saw their flights getting postponed or canceled, largely affecting their summer vacation plans. This is, of course, a time when many families travel with their with their children, with their young ones and enjoy the summer vacation. Now, after a very disruptive Friday, we are seeing many of these companies return to some sense of normalcy, begin to resume operations. But what's slightly concerning and what experts are warning about is that, in order for the whole world to fully recover, it could take a few days, if not weeks.
And the reason for that is because the heart of this issue is very, very deep. Essentially, in order to get all these computers and these systems back and running again, every single affected device needs to be manually rebooted.
And there are millions of devices that need to be manually rebooted. If, for instance, a company has a lot of resources, for instance, a Fortune 500 company or an airline for example, they usually have that I.T. support, that tech staff that can help them reboot their devices.
But for smaller businesses, they might not have the resources or the manpower to do so, which is why experts fear, Fred, that it could take days, if not weeks, for the whole world to fully recover.
PLEITGEN: Hanako Montgomery there, live for us in Tokyo.
Thank you very much.
And it's a grab bag of extreme weather across the United States this weekend, ranging from heat waves to floods.
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And still ahead, signs of hope for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. The U.S. secretary of state offers his view on the negotiations ahead of a key visit from Israel's prime minister to the United States.
Plus a Russian judge sends "The Wall Street Journal" reporter, Evan Gershkovich, to prison for 16 years. Why the U.S. and his lawyer says it's disgraceful and, quote, "a sham." That's coming up.
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PLEITGEN: Welcome back, folks.
Israel is investigating the circumstances and potential security failures around a deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv on Friday. The blast killed one man and wounded 10 others. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility and Israeli -- a military official says, air defense systems detected the drone.
But it was not intercepted due to, quote, "human error."
Meantime, the U.S. secretary of state says negotiations are, in his words, "nearing the goal line" of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. Our own Jeremy Diamond has more from Tel Aviv.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Secretary of State Antony Blinken offering a very optimistic assessment of the hostage and ceasefire
negotiations, saying that he believes that we're "inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in terms of getting an agreement."
He noted the fact that Hamas has effectively agreed to a framework proposal, the one President Biden laid out in a speech several weeks ago.
We know that for the last couple of weeks, it does appear that Israel and Hamas effectively have a framework agreement to try and build out a final
deal for a ceasefire here. But over the course of those last two weeks, we've seen officials shuttling between Doha, Qatar and Cairo, Egypt,
without actually a clear sense of how close they are actually getting to a deal. So very notable to hear the secretary state now offering this
assessment.
At the same time, he did note that he doesn't want to be "naive," saying that sometimes it is those last 10 yards that are often the hardest. The
secretary of state and President Biden may have an opportunity next week to convince the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to get across
those final 10 yards.
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As the Israeli prime minister is set to travel to Washington this weekend for a series of meetings, including with President
Biden, as.
Well, as an address to a joint meeting of Congress.
Now as all of this is happening, the International Court of Justice issuing a very significant ruling, a non-binding ruling but one that is
unprecedented in its kind as it relates to this situation. The International Court of Justice ruling that Israel's presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal. They offer that in an advisory opinion that stems from a request by the U.N. General Assembly in 2022 to assess
the legality and the consequences of Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories captured in the 1967 war.
The International Court of Justice ruling on this separate from its ongoing case regarding South Africa's allegations that Israel is committing
genocide in Gaza. But even this ruling from the International Court of Justice, an advisory ruling that is not legally binding, receiving harsh
recriminations in Israel. The Israeli prime minister saying that the Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land. Saying that no false decision in the Hague will distort what he calls a historical truth -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.
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PLEITGEN: Moving to Russia's war against Ukraine and Ukraine's president made his case directly to the British cabinet that he needs more leeway to conduct strikes inside Russia.
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PLEITGEN (voice-over): And Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a standing ovation from British cabinet ministers after arriving at their meeting in London.
Mr. Zelenskyy became the first foreign leader to address the cabinet since 1997. London has given Ukraine the green light to use British supplied missiles to strike Russia as it sees fit.
But the U.S. has imposed restrictions on the use of American weapons on Russian soil. Mr. Zelenskyy said Britain should try to convince its partners to remove those limits.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: We must deprive, put enough money and capability to produce more, more weapons.
And for his disregard of human life, he must pay with his losses and his defeat.
How can we ensure this?
Right now, we are missing the main answer to this question and that is our long-range capability. By defending Ukraine against the Russian advance on Kharkiv in May, June, we have proven that we can stop any Russian attempt to expand the war.
KEIR STARMER, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: The change of government does not change our position at all. We supported the previous government. The current opposition support this government. The only witness of this political divide here are Putin and we're not going to let that happen.
We will double down on our support. We discuss this morning further support that we can provide.
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PLEITGEN: British prime minister Keir Starmer speaking there. And Mr. Zelenskyy said he later spoke with Donald Trump and they agreed to meet and discuss ways to achieve peace in Ukraine.
Now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Lynda Thomas Greenfield, has condemned the sentencing of "The Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich. He was given a 16 year prison sentence by a court in Russia for alleged espionage on Friday, Gershkovich was arrested in March last year, purportedly for spying for the CIA on a Russian tank factory. The charges and his trial were widely dismissed as a sham.
Another American sentenced in Russia, Paul Whelan, told CNN from prison that Gershkovich was simply doing his job but he ended up in a cage, in a courtroom, where he was told he'll spend 16 years doing hard labor. Our own Matthew Chance has more on the case.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDEN (voice-over): Ahead of the verdict in the Russian courthouse, cameras jostled for a glimpse of the U.S. journalist in
his glass cage.
After finding him guilty of espionage, the judge asked Evan Gershkovich if he had any questions about the 16-year prison sentence he'd been handed.
Looking thin and tired, the Wall Street Journal reporter answered no. The critics say his guilty verdict was inevitable and underlines how
politicized Russia's judicial system has become.
A strongly worded statement from Gershkovich's employers called it a disgraceful and sham conviction that comes after his 478 days in prison,
wrongfully detained and away from his family.
CHANCE: You can see Evan Gershkovich is in there. Hi, Matthew from CNN. Are you holding up all right?
CHANCE (voice-over): It's been a saga which has seen Evan Gershkovich, now 32, make several tightly controlled court appearances.
[04:25:00] Since being detained
and accused of gathering secret information a Russian tank factory for the CIA. Allegations denied by Gershkovich and the U.S. government.
There are other U.S. citizens held in Russia --
PAUL WHELAN, AMERICAN, PRISONER IN RUSSIA: I am innocent of any --
CHANCE (voice-over): -- like Paul Whelan, a former Marine, sentenced in 2020 to 16 years for spying and also designated by Washington as wrongly detained.
Dual citizens Ksenia Karelina, an amateur ballerina from L.A. and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva are also in custody. As are Gordon Black, a
staff sergeant in the U.S. Army and U.S. school teacher Marc Fogel. Critics suspect the Kremlin has been collecting U.S. citizens as bargaining chips for a future deal. But even now, that deal could still be months or perhaps years, away.
CHANCE: The U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken said the U.S. government is working every day to bring home Evan Gershkovich and other wrongfully detained Americans held in Russia. It depends on what the other side wants in return, Blinken says.
Playing down concerns that Moscow could wait for a Trump presidency to make a deal -- Matthew Chance, CNN, London.
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PLEITGEN: Hackers appear to have taken over the official websites of Bangladesh's prime minister, the national police and the central bank.
This comes as Bangladesh is escalating its crackdown on 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 the police. The uprising began earlier this month as students demanded an end to the country's civil service jobs quota system, which they claim is discriminatory and favors the ruling party.
All right. We are going to take a quick break. For viewers in North America, I'll have more CNN NEWSROOM in just a moment. For our international viewers, look forward to "QUEST'S WORLD OF WONDER."
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PLEITGEN: And welcome back to our viewers in the United States and in Canada. I'm Fred Pleitgen. And you are watching CNN Newsroom. U.S. President Joe Biden says he is ready to hit the campaign trailer
next week once he recovers from COVID. And, of course, he's ignoring calls from members of his own party to drop out of the race. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers are now publicly urging Mr. Biden to step aside. And that includes a dozen new names on Friday alone.
A source says the President is, quote, "seething" at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi since some of her close allies are now joining those calls as well.
So what could happen if Democrats had to replace President Biden on the ballot just weeks before their convention? CNN's Brian Todd has the details.
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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.
PROF. LARRY SABATO, 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: If Biden steps decide before the convention, it could turn the convention itself into a free-for-all, or at least make it full of intrigue. Names of replacements could be put forward and the roughly 3900 Democratic delegates from across the country could decide who to vote for as the nominee.
SABATO: It's up to the delegates. In the end, it's up to them.
TODD: President Biden won almost all of those 3900 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. That's not how it works. Those delegates would essentially be free to move the way they want.
TODD: 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 3900 delegates would a candidate 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 2,000 plus Democratic delegates to vote for them on a roll call vote.
TODD: There are also additional so-called superdelegates. About 700 of them comprised 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)
PLEITGEN: And fresh off the Republican National Convention where he, of course, accepted the presidential nomination, Donald Trump is heading back on the campaign trail. New data shows an average of about 25 million people watched Trump's acceptance speech on Thursday night. That's down 21% from 2016, but a slight increase over his speech in 2020.
Later today, the former president and his vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, plan to hold their first joint rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This will be Trump's first rally since last weekend when a bullet grazed his ear in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
We're also 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 the details.
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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hours before the attempted assassination, Thomas Crooks begins his days 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 p.m. 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.
[04:35:15]
At 5:33 p.m., 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 and 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 p.m. his team was not informed of the suspicious sighting.
Two minutes before the first shot, the counter-sniper on the building closest to the shooters location, adjusts his position.
On the ground outside the perimeter, people start reacting a movement on the roof of a nearby building. A uniformed officer can be seen walking toward the building.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, someone's on top of the roof. Look. There he is right there. Right there. See him? He's laying down.
LAH: About ten seconds later, a separate counter sniper team on the southern building turns around 180 degrees to face the shooter's building.
In the ground, people alert law enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's on the roof, right here, right on the roof.
LAH: 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 to counter sniper teams are captured in these photos aiming and 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.
Shots are fired at 6:11 p.m. Trump is injured. The gunman is taken out seconds later. On his body, law enforcement find a remote transmitter to detonate close-ups that were later discovered in his car, along with a drone, the tactical vest, and more ammo.
Investigators also found the shooter's cell phone on his body. It had a screenshot of the live stream 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) PLEITGEN: And after the break, chaos and confusion at airports around the world. How soon will things return to normal after the global tech outage? More on that coming up.
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PLEITGEN: All right, returning now to one of our top stories. Some airlines, hospitals, and banks are still working to recover after Friday's massive tech outage. Nearly 800 U.S. flights have already been canceled for Saturday alone, though United Airlines says most of its systems have now recovered. CNN's Jason Carroll has more on what happened and how it affected people around the world.
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JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was the blue screen that had customers from critical industries worldwide seeing red.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm so upset right now. There are eight people in my party. Eight people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's 13 in ours.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: $456 a ticket, and they're giving me a hundred dollars back. That is it. And we're screwed. This man is getting married.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anxiety. When I walked in, I got straight anxiety with all these people. Because I was online, I couldn't find my flight. I was like, did I do something wrong?
CARROLL (voice-over): Anger at airports in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe as major carriers struggled to deal with the fallout of what had happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's been really wild. It's crazy. It's crowded. People cursing, yelling.
CARROLL (voice-over): The chaos went far beyond air travel. 911 services taking a hit in jurisdictions across the country, impacting Arizona and Alaska. The outage having a sweeping impact throughout the day. UPS and Federal Express warning of delays.
The Social Security Administration closed some of its offices, while motor vehicle departments in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had service interruptions.
Even the Department of Justice was impacted, and President Biden was briefed on the unfolding situation. Around the world, confusion at international banks as some financial systems were impacted. Disruptions at United Kingdom's National Health System, as well as broadcast networks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And a major global IT outage, largest companies, including us here at Sky News.
CARROLL (voice-over): All global technical outage linked to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity provider. The company's CEO apologized for the incident, saying it was not a cyberattack but a defect in a software update CrowdStrike was doing that crashed Microsoft Windows causing the outage. He also says a fix has been deployed.
GEORGE KURTZ, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CROWDSTRIKE; We've been on, you know, with our customers all night and working with them. Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational because of, you know, we fixed it on our end.
CARROLL (voice-over): It's still not over. The Department of Homeland Security is working with CrowdStrike and Microsoft to fully assess and address system outages.
CARROLL: And the cancellations continued throughout the day into the early evening here at Newark Airport on Friday. CrowdStrike's CEO says that it will be a lengthy process before things get back to normal. He also offered full transparency into how all of this happened and says that the company will take steps to try and make sure something like this does not happen again.
Jason Carroll, CNN, Newark.
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PLEITGEN: Jake Moore joins us now live from Wimborne in England. He is a Global Security Advisor. And, Jake, I've been looking forward to speaking to you because the question that's on everybody's mind is how on earth could something like this happen?
We all thought that there were firewalls, backup systems, something that would stop something like this from getting out of hand.
JAKE MOORE, GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY ADVISER, ESET: Yeah, it's a great question. And it comes down to updates. Now, our phones, our computers, they always need updating.
We probably get them weekly or monthly. And some people might even find them a bit of a pain, but they're so vital in keeping those devices safe. And so what CrowdStrike have done here is created this update, which is sent out to all of those Windows machines all over the world.
[04:45:03]
But that update was unfortunately faulty. It just had this critical error inside it. Maybe it wasn't tested fully enough. We don't really know exactly why it was given away without all that extra process involved. And it's just knocked over about quarter of the world's computers. And that just goes to say that this testing process is so vital in making sure this doesn't happen. PLEITGEN: So do you think that, or does it appear as though CrowdStrike got complacent, CrowdStrike wasn't accurate enough? What do you think caused this to get so out of hand?
MOORE: Well, I don't think we know yet. We may never know. It could be a whole host of different issues. So it could be human error. It may be the fact that the testing looked OK in the test environment and wasn't fully tested on all those different versions of machines, or just something went vitally wrong. And this is just the problem that we have with computers. Things can go wrong.
We've never seen anything like this on such a global scale, but I'm sure we will learn from this. And all the other companies that have to push out these updates, which are so valuable, will also be learning this as well.
PLEITGEN: Why do you think it's -- it's taking so long to get things back on track? Because you would think that if this was some sort of security update or something, you just send out a new update and everything's fine, right?
MOORE: Yeah, that's it. That would be what would normally happen if the computer is normally running. So say an update goes out and there was a mistake with it, but the computer still looks normal and opens up in Windows, then you would just get another update sent out, and that would be done instantly, pretty much.
The problem here is we've seen computers go to this blue screen of death, which is this critical error, which is what you see on the screen, and it just says it can't work unless it goes into what's called safe mode. And that's a manual process.
So we're looking at all of these computers needing people at the computer to actually run it in this particular safe mode, then send out the fix, which is available, but it has to be put through this process and then restart it again. So it will take a long time, possibly days until we see these computers back up and running.
PLEITGEN: Yeah, and that, of course, is on top of all the schedules, for instance, for airlines and hospitals and other places that need to get back on track as well. What do you think should be and maybe are some of the lessons learned in all this, not just for CrowdStrike, but of course also from the companies that employ their software, like, for instance, Microsoft and others as well?
MOORE: So yeah, this comes down to further testing and making sure things really are secure before they're released into the wild, as we say. But what happens is it's about speed. So there may have been a critical threat which CrowdStrike were aware of.
And this happens with all cybersecurity companies. They're researching new threats all the time. And as soon as they locate one, they find the antidote and then send out this patch and say, right, install this, and you should therefore be safe.
So it's about speed to make sure those computers are then safe from not being attacked by this. But of course, they want to make sure that update is secure and it actually works and functions properly. So it's that testing phase, but the speed as well.
This balance is so difficult, and unfortunately it went wrong here. But -- so usually it doesn't go wrong, and it's so quick and easy usually to get these updates out to all the computers around the world.
PLEITGEN: Were you also a bit surprised at how something like this could essentially derail, as you put it, about a quarter of the world's computer systems?
MOORE: Yeah, I mean, it does go to show how much we rely on these, say, particular systems. I think most of the world is still relying on Windows, and that's why threat actors, so cyber criminals, they do tend to target particular versions of operating systems, so in this case, Windows. But also we rely on them to make sure they're working.
So if we are using Windows in such a vast capacity, when it goes wrong, it all goes wrong very badly, and it's difficult to get different operating systems, say you've got Windows and then an Apple machine, to work together. So you tend to choose one. You stick with that. But of course, like we've seen here, as soon as that falls over, it can have catastrophic effects.
PLEITGEN: I want to talk to you about something that -- that I think really caused a lot of concern for a lot of consumers, a lot of people, really, around the world, because our lives are also, of course, becoming more and more digital. Very few of us still actually use cash, at least in parts of the world we think we can order everything. Do you have any sort of advice to people as to what to do when all this goes down, or if it goes down?
MOORE: Yeah. I mean, this is tough for me, because I'm a real advocate for technology, and I'm trying to, say, advise people that we are going to be OK with moving into digital currencies and using our phone, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all these wonderful, easy things that make our lives more efficient. And I'm one for getting rid of cash.
[04:50:05]
But of course, this has just put us back a few steps, and that's going to be a bit of an issue for us to clear up and make people have faith in the system again. But hopefully, as this has now happened, it shouldn't happen again. We've seen outages before, but not like this.
And so I'm pretty sure that this is going to be the one lesson that we all learn from. But I think it will take time before people trust it again, but give it a couple of years. I think we are moving in the right direction. This is just one of those big hiccups that is probably inevitable in the -- in the world of technology.
PLEITGEN: Yep. A glitch, as they say. Jake Moore, thank you very much.
And good things come in pairs, as the old Chinese proverb goes. When we come back, we'll tell you about the giant panda duo that's just weeks away from making their long-awaited debut. That's coming up.
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PLEITGEN: Welcome back. Do you enjoy the sounds of nature? How about singing ice in Chile? Listen to this.
[04:55:04]
Pretty eerie, isn't it? You've been listening to sounds from what has been dubbed a quote, singing lake. The spooky noise comes from the movement and cracking of ice on frozen water. This is a natural phenomenon in Europe and North America, but it's not common in Chile. That's because there aren't many lakes in the country that can sustain low temperatures for long enough.
Moving along now, and there's no less than a week now, less than a week to go before the start of the Paris Summer Olympics, and CNN is counting down the seconds to the big party with the Eiffel Tower decked out in Olympic rings and the mayor of Paris having a swim in the sand to show how safe it is.
The city is ready to declare itself open for competition, compelling stories and a communal experience with the rest of the world.
Let's take a listen to Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the opening ceremony, which will take place not in a stadium, but next to and on the river.
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THOMAS JOLLY, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, PARIS 2024 OPENING CEREMONY (through translator): We will not follow the usual structure of the ceremonies for a great celebration, which will highlight our shared humanity, this great us that we are. That is to say, us here in Paris, us in France, us in Europe, but also us in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PLEITGEN: Mark your calendars, folks. The San Diego Zoo's new giant panda pair will make their official debut on August 8th. Four-year-old Yun Chuan and three-year-old Xin Bao arrived in San Diego last month on loan from China.
Teams from both countries are monitoring them to make sure they're adjusting well. The two pandas are the first to enter the U.S. in 21 years. China's been loaning the creatures to other countries for decades under a program sometimes referred to as, quote, "panda diplomacy."
And I am Fred Pleitgen. Thanks for your company. I'll be back in just a few moments with more CNN Newsroom.
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