FAA ground stop at 3:54 p.m. ET on Friday, November 13: coincidence?

The commentary places the two blackouts against a backdrop of U.S.-China tension that had just escalated sharply. Nvidia announced the resignation of Jensen Huang, its CEO and the chip industry's loudest advocate for selling to China, after he admitted an affair with a businesswoman U.S. officials suspect of spying for Beijing. Within three hours of that announcement, Microsoft's inboxes went dark from Capitol Hill to Canberra; a day later, planes were grounded. The piece notes the FAA had ordered only two prior nationwide ground stops — on Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 11, 2023 — making Friday's the third in history.

The author draws a parallel to what is described as Beijing's habit of diverting attention from negative news by shutting down internet services, citing episodes from 2011 through 2022. Microsoft's own history with China-aligned hackers is noted: the 2021 Exchange server attacks, the 2023 theft of some 60,000 State Department emails, and a Microsoft report three weeks ago that a China-aligned group had turned AI agents loose on more than 2,250 Microsoft 365 customers. The commentary also flags the hollowing out of U.S. counterintelligence and cyber capabilities, with more than 1,500 special agents having left the FBI and almost 1,000 staffers — about one-third of the workforce — having left CISA since Trump returned to office.

While stressing it is too early to know whether hostile actors were responsible, the piece argues that the pattern of unexplained failures, shifting explanations, and suspicious timing warrants treating worst-case scenarios seriously rather than dismissing them as paranoia.