Brian Lehrer: After that special coverage of the mayor and his team with their live news conference about the tech outage this morning, 10 minutes late. This is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone, and we'll start in a minute by explaining more about the global tech outage going on this morning, and we'll invite your calls to help us report the story locally. In fact, you can start calling right now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Listeners, are you an employee or a customer of a bank that's affected, an airport or airline that's affected, any other kind of company that's affected? Certainly, in this news conference we've been listening to, they've made it sound like city services and MTA services are very minimally affected.

Is that your experience everybody? Are you hearing stories from friends or relatives, or colleagues who are affected in any area of life? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. What might it help your neighbors and others to know about what you can or cannot do right now? We'll ask our guests in a minute how one outage at one company, Microsoft, in this case, can affect so many systems around the world. Is concentration of services good or bad for the way the world functions in the 21st century? Anyone listening who works in tech and who can give us some insight into what actually happened here and that larger structural picture, that question, you're invited too, to help us report this story, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Call or text. We did check early this morning and all our systems seemed to be working, our phones are working, our text message service is working. All the connections to the transmitters seem to be working, so all heads up for us. Thumbs up for us as far as I could tell. I will say that as your calls are starting to come in, I'll tell you that also today on the show, we have Brooklyn Congressman and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries scheduled right around one hour from now, around 11:10 amid the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Party about whether President Biden should remain in the race.

It's been reported by The Washington Post in the last day that Jeffries told the president in a one-on-one meeting that his continued presence on the ticket imperils the Democrat's chances for control of the House and the Senate, not just the presidency. We'll see if Jeffries is willing to take a public position one way or another on that by now. If not Biden, who and how should they decide? That and more coming up. Because we all need a break at the end of a week like this, "Weird Al" Yankovic will join us at the end of the show on this day that he's releasing a new song and video. Stay tuned for Weird Al in a weird year.

What happens when the software that protects our computer networks from cybersecurity attacks turns out to be its own cyber threat, as the mayor was just describing. That seems to be the situation we're dealing with today, as an update to the security software from the company CrowdStrike has caused massive problems for users around the world, from grounded flights to non-functioning apps. We're seeing how connected our computer systems really are. As your calls are coming in telling us if this has affected you in any way, we're joined now by Tom Warren, senior editor and author of the Notepad newsletter for The Verge, and by WNYC and Gothamist reporter Brittany Kriegstein. Tom Warren, Brittany, welcome to the show.

Tom Warren: Hey, thanks for having me.

Brittany Kriegstein: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Tom, a lot of people have never heard this word or this company name until just this morning. What is CrowdStrike?

Tom Warren: Yes, so CrowdStrike is basically a security software firm that puts their software onto Windows PCs to secure them. It's like your antivirus software.

Brian Lehrer: Does Microsoft get any of the blame for this or is CrowdStrike just its own independent thing?

Tom Warren: I think this is one of the rare times that Microsoft doesn't get the full blame here. CrowdStrike's obviously issued their own update to their software that runs on top of Windows. They've had some sort of issue with it where it's corrupted, the software that they use on these systems. Microsoft hasn't actually been involved in distributing this update. They've obviously had a bunch of security issues themselves over the past few years. I think this is probably one of the rare times where we could say that it's no major blame on Microsoft this time.

Brian Lehrer: In reading up on CrowdStrike a bit, it looks like they have successfully foiled cyber attacks in the past. Is that right?

Tom Warren: Yes, they have. Their software is widely used across the world for managing the security of Windows PCs and servers. It's of the best quality of software for doing that, which is why it's so widely used and which is why we're seeing all these banks and airlines and TV broadcasters going offline today, because obviously when their software goes wrong, it impacts so many critical systems. Yes, it's a widely used piece of software.

Brian Lehrer: Brittany, I'm sure you were listening to the mayor and his team and their news conference like I was, and it sounded like, "Problem, what problem? No problem here." What are you reporting has been affected in New York City and vicinity?

Brittany Kriegstein: Sure. It seems like, for the most part, the things that remain impacted at this point are mostly signs, let's say informing passengers on subway systems when their train is coming. That's not on all subway lines, that's just on the lettered subway lines apparently. Of course, airports. Airports are still scrambling, flights are still grounded for a variety of airlines.

Yes, to your point, city officials were pretty adamant that we have separated our systems here for 911, 311 for other essential services like ferries, water systems, and all of those things are running as they should be. Really just confusion at this point from people figuring out what's impacted, what's not, looking up at billboards in Times Square, a few of which are black this morning, eerily so. People are just wrapping their heads around this, but it seems like safety is not currently affected in a major way,

Brian Lehrer: That's important to hear because there were reports that 911 systems were disrupted in some places. It sounds like that was not the case here.

Brittany Kriegstein: No, that's not the case here. I was just speaking with police officials not long ago who said they're responding to calls as usual. FDNY as well. There's no backlog there, but they will have to implement some workarounds. The NYPD's main computer systems where we go to ask about incidents and they look for information, those appear to be down at the moment. It's unclear how that's going to keep shaking out throughout the day.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda in Newark, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in, Amanda. Hi.

Amanda: Hi. Good morning. I'm just calling to report. My sister left this morning to Newark Airport and she still hasn't been able to board her flight along with anybody else. They were given new vouchers, but they still don't know when this will end.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda, thank you very much. Tony in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. You're going to help us report this story too. I see. Hi.

Tony: Hi. Good day. Yes, I went to make a purchase at Petco to pick up a couple of fish for a client, and the manager was at the door and she mentioned that you can shop, but the registers are down. I imagine it's affecting Petco and businesses alike.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, thank you, Tony. We've seen a New York Times story that said Key Foods in Brooklyn was closed earlier. I don't know if it is still, because their computer system wouldn't boot up, so they couldn't figure out how to let people make purchases. Tom Warren from The Verge, it seems like the most serious impact for many people is at the airports.

We heard that caller from Newark talking about her sister stuck there since 4:00 AM and they're not able to tell them even yet when things are going to go back online. Why do you think airports have been at the high end of what's been caused to go down from these things? She said they couldn't say when. Can you give any estimate from your knowledge as to when the airports will work again?

Tom Warren: Yes, that is how long is a piece of string at the moment, I think. In terms of why it's actually impacted the airports more, I think it's because a lot of airports actually, when you look up the screens, you're looking for your boarding time, you're actually looking at a Windows PC there, essentially. That part of it is crucial to letting people know when to board.

Obviously, if that goes down, they don't know which gate to go to. The other thing is printing out boarding passes. A lot of the machines powered by that or Windows. If they all go down, boarding passes can't be printed. That causes issues. We did see actually an airline in India has been issuing handwritten boarding passes, which is not something I've seen in my short lifetime. It just impacts so many things. I think that's the IT outages that we're seeing here. It's amazing how many things that you don't even really think about that's running Windows, that when you take out cash from an ATM, that might be a Windows PC that you're actually using. It just touches so many places and that's going to be very apparent in a location like an airport.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. David in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, David.

David: Oh, hey Brian, excited to chat real quick. I just wanted to say I work for the city and currently right now I cannot remotely access my logging computer. I know a number of different city agencies, people who work remotely are not able to log in and perform their jobs.

Brian Lehrer: That's important information, David. Brittany, does that contradict anything that the mayor and his team said in the news conference? It sounds from what the caller said that people even in emergency services agencies can't access their work computers remotely.

Brittany Kriegstein: Right, I think that's a big problem. It doesn't sound like that was something that the mayor and his team really touched on this morning, saying that everything is pretty much working as it should. City agencies are doing what they should be doing. I think throughout the day we're going to be hearing a lot more about, like I said, how that's actually shaking out when you have maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of city employees, who knows, who can't log on to perform their tasks. How will that-- I foresee maybe at the end of today just a big domino effect of things that haven't gotten done or a pile-up. We just really have to keep an eye on that.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another city worker calling in, Jesse in Manhattan. Jesse, you're on WNYC, thanks for calling.

Jesse: Hi. I am in the office right now and I couldn't log into my own computer at the office until 20 minutes ago. I don't have access to any of my shared folders. The intranet is not working either, so I can't really do much. I work in payroll so I can access some of the citywide programs but I can't access my own folders, shared folders either.

Brian Lehrer: This is in a city payday, is it? Does it mean people aren't going to get paid?

Jesse: Well, no. Yes, payday is today, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, so do you think that's going to be affected for maybe hundreds of thousands of city workers? Go ahead.

Jesse: Direct deposit should have gone through already.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's hope. Tom Warren what about the banks, though? That's another thing that I've been reading is the banking system in various ways has been affected. Know anything about that specifically?

Tom Warren: Yes, I think from what I've been hearing, and in another world I used to work in investment banks myself. I think what I've been hearing is less that the actual trading platforms of banks, and depositing money, and all that stuff are down. It's more the people that make the trades, the traders can't get access to their machines, so they're not able to actually buy and sell shares on the market right now for some of them. That's been a lot of the impact there.

We did see some Australian banks, because the way this has obviously worked is it's followed the sun. We've seen Australian banks going offline, and we've seen some of the broadcasters there, and the supermarkets there, and stuff having issues. Then it's hit Europe. I think with you guys on the East Coast and the West Coast, I think you'll probably see less of an impact because if some of those machines have been offline and they haven't been online when this faulty update went out, then as people are waking up, obviously West Coast is starting to wake up now, they probably won't have got that faulty update, so it could be, with some luck, it could be that we don't see such a great impact as we saw across Australia and Europe.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Although, Brittany, it sounds like from that last caller there's another follow-up story for you. Our city workers who rely on direct deposit actually getting paid today on a city government payday.

Brittany Kriegstein: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: One more call and this is going to be on the structural question, and then we're going to be out of time and assume that things are good enough to go back to regular programming. Obviously, listeners, we're going to keep you updated on that CrowdStrike, as it's called, tech outage and its various ramifications locally as well as globally. Jack in Queens, I think, wants to raise the structural issue here. Jack, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling.

Jack: Hey, what's going on? I just think these companies are too big to fail. I would say not a big company is Salesforce. Salesforce is in everybody's system, and if that goes down, everything goes down. We need to split these companies up, that way we don't have one big company for everything.

Brian Lehrer: Jack, thank you very much. Tom Warren, a thought on that? Is our system too centralized if a CrowdStrike problem can affect all these things we've been talking about around the world all of a sudden all at once?

Tom Warren: Yes, so many systems rely on Windows, as I was saying about the airport systems. They are just stuff that you would never even realize is running Windows. I think the main problem is that how did an update like this reach these systems without being tested? This is something we rarely see in the case of actually impacting machines. Usually, it's like, oh my Outlook or my Gmail goes down for a couple of hours, everyone can't read their email, but then a couple of hours it's all fixed and we all move on.

This is very different because it's actually knocking these machines offline. It does make you think like-- there's not good situation for these updates to be being able to do that in the first place and to just coming onto machines just freely like this, and just taking down such key infrastructure around the world.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'm going to add one additional call because we heard from the Health and Hospitals corporation director in the mayor's news conference that the city's hospitals don't seem to be affected. We're getting somebody who works in a medical office in Queens saying some things are, at least there. Ann in Bayside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ann.

Ann: Hi. I'm not working today but I called my office and the computers are down. Our charts are all eCharts. As patients come in, they don't have past information available to them, it's re-interviewing patients. I imagine there's many medical offices of eCharts are probably in the same boat.

Brian Lehrer: I guess in an acute situation that could become dangerous potentially if medical personnel can't access somebody's chart.

Ann: Possibly, yes. If they're coming in for treatment you may not know exactly what.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for checking in with us. Another one like that. All right, Theresa in Park Slope, you're on WNYC contradicting the mayor, I think. Theresa, you're on the air. Hi.

Theresa: Hi, Brian. Yes, I got a call from one of the hospitals. I was scheduled for my annual mammogram, sonogram follow-up cancer treatment. Yes, they had to cancel it because they can't check people in, they can't read the scans. There was absolutely no point in coming.

Brian Lehrer: Theresa, thank you very much. All right, WNYC and Gothamist reporter Brittany Kriegstein covering this tech outage locally. Sounds like you got a bunch of leads there for your next few hours, and thanks for joining us with what you do know this morning.

Brittany Kriegstein: Sure thing. It definitely looks like it's going to be a busy day for all of us, so thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Tom Warren, senior editor and author of Notepad newsletter for The Verge covering tech. Tom, thank you for hopping on very short notice.

Tom Warren: Yes, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We turn the page, much more to come.

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