🖥️ Axios PM: System failure

Plus: Billionaire Bruce | Friday, July 19, 2024

Open in app View in browser   Presented By PhRMA   Axios PM By Mike Allen · Jul 19, 2024 Happy Friday! Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 503 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Carlos Cunha for copy editing.     1 big thing: CrowdStrike chaos   Data: FlightAware; Note: Circles sized by share of flights; Map: Axios Visuals The global chaos today across a host of internet systems was caused by a single defect in a cybersecurity update — a problem that will very likely happen again. 🛬 More than 2,335 flights within, leaving or arriving in the U.S. were canceled as of midday Friday. 🆘 Some hospitals canceled or postponed surgeries. Banks couldn't handle money transfers. Some parts of the U.S. saw disruptions to 911 calls, court records and other municipal services. Passengers wait in Madrid airport as a display shows the "blue screen of death." Photo: Diego Radames/Anadolu via Getty Images 😳 It all happened because of a flaw in a software update from CrowdStrike, a major cybersecurity company with some of the world's biggest corporations as customers. Some experts estimate it could be days before all affected organizations are back up and running. 🟦 This won't be the last time something like this happens, Axios managing editor for tech Scott Rosenberg writes: No one has ever built a crash-proof system, and no one ever will. Software is made by people, and people make mistakes. That truth has been with us since the dawn of computing. Go deeper. Digital billboards in Times Square were offline because of the outage. Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images     2. 🎶 Inflation (Taylor's version)   Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo. Photo: Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via Getty Image   Swifties are wreaking havoc across the Atlantic — at least in European central banks, Axios Macro co-author Courtenay Brown reports. 📈 Why it matters: The U.S. leg of Taylor Swift's "Eras" tour was credited with significant economic booms in the cities where it stopped. But now that the tour is making its way across Europe, the same effects — ticket purchases, travel expenditures, enormous demand for hotel rooms and food — are taking on a different hue. They're temporarily making inflation look much higher, at a time when central banks are trying to figure out whether inflation has cooled down enough to lower interest rates. 🔮 "This will make it harder to read the underlying strength of inflation," said Krishna Guha, the vice chairman of investment advisory firm Evercore ISI. "The question is whether policymakers will be confident enough in their forecasts for continued disinflation to look through this." Share this story.     A message from PhRMA Middlemen make money, not medicines     Over half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen, like PBMs, insurers and big pharmacies, along with others. They control what medicines you can get and what you pay at the pharmacy. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it.     3. Catch me up   Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage inside a courtroom today in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Photo: AP 📰 Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison on espionage charges for which the Russian government has never provided evidence. The U.S. condemned the trial as a sham. Go deeper. 😷 President Biden is recovering well from COVID, the White House physician said. Go deeper ... Read the letter Several more congressional Democrats — including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus — called on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. Go deeper.     4. 🎸 The Boss is a billionaire   Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform Monday in Stockholm. Photo: Magnus Lejhall/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images After 21 studio albums, one bestselling memoir, 20 Grammys, an Oscar and two Golden Globes, Bruce Springsteen is now a billionaire, by Forbes magazine's calculations. 💰 He's likely worth at least $1.1 billion, according to Forbes' "conservative" estimates. 🕺 And Springsteen, even at age 74, is still at it — he and the E Street Band are on a European tour right now, still plowing through three-hour shows to packed houses.     A message from PhRMA Middlemen make money, not medicines     Over half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen, like PBMs, insurers and big pharmacies, along with others. They control what medicines you can get and what you pay at the pharmacy. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it.   Are you a fan of this email format? Your essential communications — to staff, clients and other stakeholders — can have the same style. Axios HQ, a powerful platform, will help you do it.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Advertise with us. Axios, 3100 Clarendon B‌lvd, Arlington VA 22201   You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from Axios. To stop receiving this newsletter, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now to get Axios in your inbox.   Follow Axios on social media: