• Markets: Stocks ended yesterday mixed, but it was still generally a good week to be a tech company whose name doesn’t rhyme with Shmenvidia. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell yesterday, but still notched its best week since August. But Nvidia, having spent the week embroiled in scandals that forced its CEO to step down, suffered its sixth losing week in a row for its worst streak since 2012. The chipmaker has lost ~$1.7 trillion in value during this slide, per CNBC.

down bad

Thiago Trevisan/Adobe Stock

From just before 4pm ET until 8:15pm, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a national ground stop, which halted all planes departing in the United States due to “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” It was only the second time since 9/11 that a national ground stop went into effect.

What went down

At a White House press conference just after the ground stop was lifted, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the incident stemmed from new technology upgrades “overwhelming” the aging air traffic control communication system and did not appear to be the result of a cyberattack or anything “nefarious.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said of those upgrades, “I didn’t anticipate that we would have an outage like this.”

Duffy also urged Congress to allocate $50 billion to fix the aging system and warned that more disruptions like this would happen unless the systems’ technical underpinnings were completely overhauled.

By 9:30pm ET, more than 6,600 flights had been canceled for Friday, and another 1,500 for Saturday:

• Travel data firm Cirium estimated that 1.5 million travelers were stranded by the cancellations.
• Sports teams ranging from college football to the NHL and NBA traveling for games were hard hit, and NFL teams had to wonder if their flights for weekend games would get jostled in the aftermath of the ground stop.
• All air cargo and parcel shipment operations were also halted during the ground stop, impacting delivery times of consumer packages as well as supply chain logistics.

Lifting the ground stop helps get passengers moving again, but delays and cancellations are expected to carry into the weekend as planes, pilots, and crews are out of position.

Looking ahead: Duffy said that it was “going to be slow” to get air travel back to its baseline, but that he didn’t expect disruptions during Thanksgiving travel in a couple of weeks.—HVL

      

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World

Tour de headlines

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

🫵 Treasury secretary blames Commerce secretary for lack of Nvidia chip restrictions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he and other members of the Trump administration wanted restrictions on exports to Megaspeed—the company led by Alice Huang, a paramour of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (no relation) and an alleged Chinese spy—but that Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department didn’t impose them. In case you’ve been on a darkness retreat all week: Huang resigned on Thursday amid reports of his affair with Alice Huang and with two Nvidia employees. Bessent told CNBC that his department, the Defense Department, and the State Department were all in favor of tougher restrictions on sending chips to Megaspeed, but that it was up to the Commerce Department. “You’ll have to ask them about their internal processes,” he said. The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to media outlets’ request for comment.—AR

🤫 Nvidia tamps down speculation over new CEO. The chipmaker, currently being led on an interim basis by CFO Colette Kress in the wake of Jensen Huang’s sudden downfall, said it hadn’t started identifying candidates for the permanent CEO job yet. “We are in the process of selecting a search firm for the Nvidia CEO role,” the company’s board told CNBC yesterday. “We have not formally engaged any potential candidates.” The statement came after rumors swirled over who might take the helm, with the FT reporting that the board had approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas—which sent Arm’s stock down. Meanwhile, Wired reported that some employees are urging the board to find a way to bring back Huang.—AR

🚀 SpaceX launches Starship in key test of reusable rocket. Elon Musk’s space company launched Test Flight 15 yesterday, the most ambitious test yet of its massive Starship rocket. The test was meant to be the first time SpaceX attempted to catch both the booster and upper stage of the spacecraft—which would bring it closer to its “holy grail”: a fully reusable rocket. But it still has a chance to make history today, if it can stick the landing. The company may still try to catch the 171-foot-tall upper part of the spacecraft for the first time (it has caught the booster in past tests) as it falls back to Earth. This is an important part of SpaceX’s strategy to quickly reuse rockets, which would save millions of dollars per mission.—BC, AR

BACK TO WORK

Nick Iluzada

Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft services slowly began returning to normal yesterday, after the tech company’s massive outage disrupted business-as-usual around the world on Thursday, causing somewhat of a syllabus day for some workers, and leaving others to resort to…fax machines.

The outage hit Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot, cloud, and security software users in more than 70 countries and territories, according to the outage tracker Downdetector.

• Government offices, public transit networks, retailers, banks, and countless companies were affected.
• All in all, the outage could cost at least $7 billion in lost productivity from tens of millions of Microsoft users, according to a Michigan think tank.

“We are deeply sorry,” Microsoft said yesterday on X. The company noted “encouraging recovery progress,” but said that “intermittent issues” might continue.

It’s not clear why this happened

“This was a technical issue” unrelated to AI, with “no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity,” Microsoft said. The company referenced an “elevated load” and said it’ll share more information as it reviews the incident.

Zoom out: This is another reminder of why the modern economy’s reliance on hyperscalers can be risky, as one company’s technical difficulties can mess with an entire planet’s daily operations. Similar concerns arose when Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services crashed huge swaths of the internet last year.—ML

      

Reader Poll

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ICYMI

Have you heard...

Here’s everything that didn’t make it into this week’s newsletters but we immediately sent to the group chat.

➡️ Paying users of Meta’s AI assistant Muse can now have it call US businesses. The agent can supposedly call your cable company or make reservations at a restaurant. You’ll just have to be cool with the judgmental 23-year-old hostess knowing you used the Facebook monster to set your date.

➡️ Wealthy parents are turning their homes into private Dave and Buster’s, outfitting them with huge game rooms and pickleball courts to keep their adult kids coming back. They can try, but there will always be another dad with a lakehouse and a jet ski around the corner.

➡️The most reliable way to churn out holiday content has finally met its match. Ebenezer, the new take on the Dickens classic starring Johnny Depp, is getting lackluster reviews. It is finally time for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to have its moment.

➡️ Mere hours after its official opening, a man managed to get trapped in Chicago’s first self-cleaning public toilet. He just didn’t see the button that would open the bathroom’s door and resorted to kicking it to try and force it open. To be fair, when Chicagoans feel backed into a corner, their go-to is to kick.

➡️ Valorie Lee Schaefer, the author who wrote the iconic puberty bible The Care and Keeping of You, has written another book for women entering midlife. It’s sure to explore topics like perimenopause, how to feel proud of yourself even if you aren’t buying a home like all your friends, and weird chin hairs. —MM

News

What else is brewing

• President Trump is planning an unprecedented summit with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in China next week.
• A tanker crashed into a New Orleans cruise boat with 180 passengers onboard, partially sinking it in the Mississippi River. After rescue efforts, 32 people were taken to local hospitals, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called it “a literal miracle” that all the passengers were accounted for.
• The Supreme Court will consider whether the Trump administration’s ban on asylum claims at the southern border is legal.
• OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Wallet, a feature that lets its dots agents make purchases for you.
• Rep. Lauren Boebert, a MAGA-aligned Republican from a very red Colorado district, has lost her seat to Democrat Eileen Laubacher. The AP called the close race yesterday.
• Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins won the governor race in Alaska and Cindy Holscher won the governor race in Kansas. Both are Democrats.
• Mauricio Pochettino has left US Soccer’s Men’s National Team to coach Manchester United, so now he’ll have to get used to calling it football again.
• The Metropolitan Opera will livestream its sold-out performance of Lincoln in the Bardo for free (with a fundraising ask) on YouTube tonight, a first for the company and proof that Timothée Chalamet was wrong.

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Community

Crowd work

Last week, we asked, “What’s a book that had a big impact on you?” Here are some of our favorite responses:

• “The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. At less than 100 pages, it offers the most succinct advice on how to live, love, parent, be a friend, grieve...every time I struggle with something, I open the book to see what Gibran said about it. It’s my favorite book to gift.”—Farida from Indianapolis, IN
• “Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve never read anything so poetically hypnotic and haunting. Every sentence is carefully crafted. It stands alone in its own class: a philosophical Western written in incantatory, biblically inflected epic prose.”—Dustin from Virginia
• “The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien crafts a masterful story within a story detailing events that never happened but are the truest representation of the experience. This concept has stuck with me and expanded my concept of real vs. reality.”—Chris from Richmond, VA
• “The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham. I loved how it showed how experiences and trauma shape our life paths. One path is about discovering the self and the other path about safety, security, and possessions. I ended up joining the Peace Corps instead of taking over the family business and never looked back.”—Zane from Takoma Park, MD
• “The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa gave me a profound respect for how cats think and view the world. After reading this book, I often wondered what my mother’s cat, at that time an 8-year-old tuxedo with attitude, thought about me. I like to believe she liked me, even when she rarely showed it. My mother was 101 years old when I gave her this book to read. It kept her occupied for an hour each day, during which time I had some respite from caregiving. One of my loveliest memories of my mother was discussing the book with her and seeing how much she doted on her cat. My mother would pass away three years later, but I suspect the cat already knew it.”—Barbara from Honolulu, HI

This week’s question

What’s a chain business you feel sentimental about?

Sam’s answer to get the juices flowing: “My grandpa and I would stuff ourselves with fried chicken, mac and cheese, and similar delights at Old Country Buffet whenever we went to our local DMV located in the same mall. It was the greasiest dining imaginable, but it’s also the sweetest of memories, not least because of all the bottomless soft serve.”

Submit your response here.

recs

• A map of places in New England that you’re probably pronouncing wrong.
• This video will teach you the cooking hacks a chef thinks everyone should know.
• Hear the last song Dolly Parton recorded, a duet with Bono.
• An ice pack mask designed for migraines.**

^{*A message from our sponsor. **This is a product recommendation from our writers. When you buy through this link, Morning Brew may earn a commission.}

Play

Brew Crossword: What do construction workers, Rockettes, muralists, and train engineers have in common? They are all partying in our biggest puzzle of the week. Play the Crossword here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that is yearning for the flattest home money can buy. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Today’s property is in Owings Mills, MD, a suburb of Baltimore that also hosts the training headquarters of the Baltimore Ravens. This midcentury modern estate was built in 1956 and sits on 3.85 acres. Amenities include:

• 6 beds, 7 baths
• In-ground pool
• Covered walkway between wings of the house

How much for the wooded hideaway?

Answer

$3.5 million

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: hypnotic, meaning “mesmerizing or spellbinding.” Thanks to James from Philadelphia for the compelling suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.