Duffy: FBI, Intel Chiefs Checked for Foreign Hand in FAA Ground Stop

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that FBI and federal intelligence officials investigated whether a foreign actor was behind Friday’s nationwide air traffic disruption, Fox News reported in a post on X.

Duffy said authorities currently have no evidence of a foreign cyberattack and instead pointed to maintenance work by FAA contractor L3Harris, according to reporting by Yahoo News and Scripps News.

NEW DETAILS: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the FBI and federal intelligence officials investigated whether a foreign actor was behind the nationwide air traffic disruption.

Duffy reveals that top officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, joined an emergency… pic.twitter.com/BT8XQyOLcw

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 14, 2026

National security officials pulled in

Duffy said FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and other officials joined a conference call Friday because of concerns that the outage might involve a cyberattack or a threat from another country, the Times of India reported. The White House Situation Room was also involved, according to the same report.

Duffy also said he spoke with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as officials looked into concerns about a foreign cyberattack, The Mirror reported via AOL. He said authorities do not have evidence to support that theory, according to the report.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said investigators found “zero evidence of anything nefarious,” the Times of India reported. On Friday evening, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, “We have seen zero evidence that this is a cyberattack,” according to a DHS release.

The FBI does not believe a cyberattack or criminal activity caused the outage, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, according to SecurityWeek.

Contractor work under review

Duffy said the outage began during routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility, where aging copper telecommunications lines were being switched to fiber, Scripps News reported. The work was being done by L3Harris, the FAA’s longtime telecommunications contractor, and a router involved in the work began flooding the FAA network with traffic, according to Scripps.

“What we are working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installation error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?” Duffy said at the press conference, according to The Mirror via AOL. “Until I can build” a new network, “I’m stuck with L3Harris,” Duffy said, Yahoo News reported.

L3Harris had not commented on the outage as of the press conference, the Times of India reported.

Flights still recovering

The FAA ordered a four-hour ground stop Friday while authorities investigated and worked to stabilize the system, the Times of India reported. Of roughly 20,000 flights affected, about 12,000 could not be recovered, Bedford said, according to the Times of India.

Bedford estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 of the 41,000 flights scheduled for Saturday could still be canceled, but said the worst of the disruption was over, the Times of India reported. He said affected passengers should contact their airlines, which should rebook them or provide a full refund, according to the report.

Duffy renewed his call for Congress to approve $50 billion for a new air traffic control system, the Times of India reported. Mullin said Friday that the outdated system is “a national security risk,” according to the DHS release.

Sources

• Fox News on X
• Yahoo News: FAA ground stop latest updates
• Scripps News: What caused the FAA ground stop?
• Times of India: ‘No foreign actor involved’
• SecurityWeek: No Signs of Hacking in FAA Ground Stop
• The Mirror via AOL: Sean Duffy says ‘incompetence’ or ‘faulty router’ to blame
• DHS: Secretary Mullin and Secretary Duffy Address Nationwide FAA Ground Stop

Reporting by Daily Beltway.