From The Washington Examiner:

…Transportation policy experts tried to figure out what this meant, with little initial definitive information from the government.

Brandon Pugh is a policy director in cybersecurity for the R Street Institute think tank as well as a pilot. On the day of the shutdown, he told the Washington Examiner that he wasn’t happy with the answers he was getting.

“Unfortunately, I am not clear on the exact cause of this outage, and the FAA only states they ‘will continue to look into the cause of the initial problem,’” Pugh said. “This alone is concerning because we are not clear on what led to this widespread disruption, even hours later.”

For its part, he explained, “The White House said they have seen no evidence of a cyberattack and have ordered an investigation. However, the outage from today shows the potential a cyber incident could have on aviation and the country. For example, if an ‘outage’ of this system alone results in delays and aircraft being grounded, a far worse outcome could result if a cyberattack was used.”

Putting on his pilot cap, Pugh added, “The NOTAM system provides valuable information to pilots, so clearly, a backup system and plan is critical for the future to help prevent this…”

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