Microsoft Ignored Warning Days Before Worldwide Outage

A minor glitch in a software update last week caused chaos for the banking industry, airlines, and hundreds of millions of people across the globe. This massive outage could have been avoided, but the companies responsible have spent millions convincing regulators to back off. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A minor glitch in the software update last week caused chaos for the banking industry. Airlines and hundreds of millions of people across the globe could not get where they wanted to go. This massive outage could have been avoided, but the company's responsible have sent millions convincing regulators to back off. We're doing fine. We don't need any help. We don't need any regulations. Well, look, it's so apparent. You've got Microsoft that is trying to blame this on.

Yeah. They're saying the CrowdStrike update.

The CrowdStrike. Yeah. Okay. Well, no, that is nonsense. The truth is, the federal government said to Microsoft, and they said to Amazon, and they said to Google, you guys have a big problem because you own everything. There's no diversity in the cloud system. Everything's going into the cloud and being controlled by companies that don't have the capacity to do it. And they said, no, if you do that, you're gonna interfere with innovation. We've got this. Don't worry about this regulator. We've got it under control. You think back, it was the same thing with railroads. This is the closest to the railroad monopoly that I've ever seen. And for some reason, we act like it's different. It's exactly the same thing. They need to be busted up. You can't have these people controlling all this.

Right. The FTC has been on Microsoft's back for over a year telling them, hey, this is gonna cause a problem. We really need to have some hearings about this. We need you guys to respond. And every Microsoft response was, you guys are overreacting. Everything is perfectly fine. Who do you think you're talking to here? We've got this under control. In fact, as recently as two days before the outage, the federal regulators were warning, something horrible is going to happen because you have not diversified. It is so consolidated that something as simple as a software update crippled the world.

Yeah, understand, an update. This was run the update and everything stopped. And the point, this is a massive threat to the economy.

It is.

I mean, if somebody figured out how to make this an element of war, we'd be in big trouble.

Well, and I guarantee you, after seeing what happened, they're working on it. They absolutely are working on it.

No question. So you have this argument, you can't regulate us. We're so smart. We have a security system. They knew they didn't have a security system. Matter of fact, it showed they didn't want to spend money on the security system. It would've cost them too much money to do what the government was telling 'em to do. You have to have a security system. And they lied, basically. They absolutely made up this lie that we've got it under control. There's nothing to worry about and that the consolidation of our companies, there should be no limits. If it's Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, we should be able to control the world of tech. And you see how dangerous this is. It's just so freaking dangerous.

Well, honestly, I think you bring up a really great point here with the arrogance of these companies. Look, we're the tech guys. We're so much smarter than everybody else. You can't sit there in Washington, DC, with your law degree and tell us how to run a tech company. You don't know anything about this. Well, they know enough to have warned you for years that this would happen. You dismissed it and then it happened. But they've also spent so many millions of dollars lobbying these same organizations and lawmakers to not do anything about it, that it probably would've been cheaper just to invest in the security than buying everybody off.

That's an interesting point. If you look at the multi-millions of dollars that they paid to politicians to make 'em vote their way. And you just said, okay, let's regroup on that.