Microsoft outage impacts millions. Tech expert explains the ripple effects

It's now. been more than 15 hours since Microsoft. Outlook suffered. a global outage on Thursday. that's so severe. it has left millions of people. without their email. Now, it started around. noon eastern time on Thursday. and has dragged on ever since. The internet. performance site Downdetector. reports that the outage reached. 74 countries. and territories in about an hour. Some workers in America got so fed up. they went home early. Businesses in Australia. couldn't print bills in schools, canceled.

some of their online classes. I want to go straight to Gage. Golding now, who is standing by in Seoul. with the latest on this for us. Gage, I'm just going to ask the question. we are all asking right now, which is. when is this going to get fixed? You know, I imagine. that there's somebody. in like this tech room closet somewhere. with a really big switch. that they can just flip. and just get it all fixed for us. But it seems like that's not necessarily.

the case right now. Microsoft indicating. that they're seeing. marginal success. with getting the fix rolled out. So I guess that's better than no success. But marginal isn't necessarily. the word that we're looking for here. In some of you said it right there. Australia. The first country. waking up on this Friday. the 13th to see just the slew of problems. from court feeds being down, schools. not being able to host online. classes, people. missing job interviews. because they can't access. Microsoft Teams. It's not just email, it's.

teams, OneDrive, Microsoft, Copilot, AI, SharePoint, you name it. It's across much of the 365 suite. And again, it's not just here. in the Asia-Pacific region, but across the world, in Europe, as they're waking up, many people. figuring out. that I can't communicate via email, in the United States, many cities, I'm going to rattle off. just a few. But yeah, Miami Beach, Austin, Texas, Jacksonville, Pasadena, California, Burbank, Santa Barbara, all of those are impacted. The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office in. Colorado is actually having delayed.

bond payments for their prisoners. So people sitting in jail. because their bond payments. can't be made. So it's a widespread problem. And from what we know right. now, according to the Australian Home. Affairs Minister, that this seems to be not not some sort. of cyber attack. That's the good news. But it was, according to the Home Affairs minister, a failed update, that went awry somehow. causing, kind of a catastrophic failure, if you will. And they've been working to fix that. But I spoke with one analyst. with two questions.

A how does this happen in 2026. after many other large scale failures? Even as recent as last year, the year before. But how many people are truly impacted. by this? Take a listen. I would. estimate that it. could be anywhere. over 100 million or more, customers. that are impacted by this outage today. The idea that. after the CrowdStrike outage. and after other outages. that we've seen, that a company like Microsoft. could have an outage that would be global.

in nature, is unthinkable. Unthinkable. And today, traders are already. showing this in after hours trading, or I should say, early hours. trading at this point for the US. Microsoft stock down, nearly 3%. As we go into this Friday the 13th, there is no end in sight, I would reckon, at least in the past. Usually when these things are fixed, that happens pretty quickly. You just magically get a flood of emails. So hopefully that happens sooner.

rather than later. But many folks across. the world. may wake up in Europe and America. and realize. that they're going to have. a lot easier of a day, especially if you work remote. I definitely woke. up to that this morning, but we still got our show on the air, didn't we? Gage, thank you so much for that. Very spooky. The Friday the 13th update from Seoul. Thank you. Let's get more on this. from Jacob Ward, a CNN contributor. and founder of the Rip current.com. Jacob. Good to have you with us. We couldn't email you to coordinate this.

because we use Microsoft Outlook here, but we had to. do an old school on the phone. But but talk to us about. how does this even happen? Yeah. You know, Microsoft has not, really told us what exactly, caused this. All we know, and I have to glance down at this. because it's so technical. that that basically the servers. that, are trying to basically. make a connection. basically keep getting knocked over, that. every time. they, they,

try to bring the affected. servers back online. Something about the way. it makes a cure connection. gets overwhelmed. and the whole thing goes down again. So they've been really having trouble. bringing this back up. And so what exactly caused this? It's not entirely clear there. I think have been some configuration. changes recently, a sort of, you know, software update. that they seem to have been doing. that may have caused this, but right now. it seems to be. sort of a mystery to the world. as to why exactly this happened. And it's even more of a mystery. as to. when this thing is going to be back up, because this isn't just email.

This is, you know, basically every service. that Microsoft provides in the cloud, for some customers, including, in some cases, the security software that people rely on. for their email to defender services. And so not only are. people's emails down the systems. they rely on to protect themselves. from email based attacks, those are down as well. And so the ripple effects for this, could go on and on. Alex, on that question of security, a lot of us, when we first heard about this. thought maybe cyber attack.

hack, what is. Microsoft saying about that? Yeah, they're saying that. there's no indication. that this was a cyber attack. Now, that is. of course. corporate speak for. we have no evidence of that at this time. So it's different from saying. we know it's not a cyber attack. Right. But at the moment. there doesn't seem to be. any indication of it. You know, we have seen in the past, this kind of thing happen before. We've seen at least twice. by my account in the last year,

Microsoft services going down for, you know, as much as ten hours at a time. And so this is not a one off. There's a little bit of a pattern. here to it, but I think, you know, it also speaks. to just sort of the nature of the, of the cloud moment. that we are in, right where huge. swaths of the world's governments. and hospitals and schools. and so forth. rely on an outsourced system like this. And so when you have so many people. bought into a single system. and that system goes down, it affects all of us. in a way that I think nobody. was really looking for here. Yeah.

And it makes you think about. if there was. a real cyber attack. on some of these systems, how quickly. you could bring down. aspects of the global. economy and business and education. and so many things. I mean, if this was just some sort. of technical error, it's affected so many people in a really. big way. Yeah. And it really. sharpens, I think, an appetite. that I've been hearing a lot of recently. for what's called tech sovereignty. This is a big thing, especially in Europe,

that they're talking about right. now, where. mostly for sort of political reasons, because they're nervous. about the Trump administration. perhaps taking advantage. of their dependance. on American technology companies. Many governments in Europe. have been trying to move off. of American systems. and onto systems like Linux, which allow you to run your own servers, and that tech sovereignty conversation. While it's been mostly political, I bet it's real sharp today as people in, you know, Australia can't get through. to the medical services. You know, because of this kind of outage,

I think it has everybody. suddenly thinking themselves, oh, geez, we are truly hostage to how secure. and reliable this system is. And as you say, Alex, this is just. seems to be a mess up, right? If it were, God forbid, an attack. or if this were some, you know, deeper dependance on AI, which were all, in theory, signing up for in the future, that could be. an even more damaging problem here. And so I think it. is probably for everybody, kind of a wake up, wake up call about. just how vulnerable we can be, even as we enjoy the convenience.

of these cloud systems. And it's also. kind of remarkable to me. that there's no backup system, or that. basically the entire globe. is on one system, and that there aren't. some places where it's working. That also doesn't. seem to be a great asset, but I'm not the tech guy here. Last, last word real quick, Jacob E. I just think it's, you know, it. is it is a a. the fact that so much of our, we depend on outsourced companies. for so much of what we do right now,

that dependency. seems to be only deepening. And today is a good reminder. that we need to, I think, look into that. and maybe. think about a different way. of organizing this. than just handing it all. to a single company. Alex. Well, a lot of threads today. reminding us of the power of tech. We didn't even get into that other. big story. It's happening with Nvidia. We do it in the last, segment. Jacob Ward, thank you so much for your insights. Hopefully everybody's emails. are back up and running soon.