House Republicans call on CrowdStrike CEO to testify about global outage

House Republicans are calling on the CrowdStrike CEO to testify in a congressional hearing about the global tech outage that impacted flights and businesses across the world on Friday.

Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) sent a letter to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on Monday requesting that he appear before the committee for a public testimony about the global outage.

“Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

The outage was attributed to a “defect” in a software update from CrowdStrike, which later said it was not a result of a cybersecurity attack.

Thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed over the weekend in the wake of the outage. Hospitals, emergency services and some government offices were also affected by the outage.

Green, the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Garbarino, the chair of the subcommittee on cybersecurity and infrastructure protection, wrote that they “cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident.”

“However, this incident must serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with network dependency. Malicious cyber actors backed by nation-states, such as China and Russia, are watching our response to this incident closely,” the lawmakers wrote.

They asked CrowdStrike to schedule a hearing with the committee by Wednesday at 5 p.m.

A spokesperson for CrowdStrike said that the company was in contact with congressional committees.

"CrowdStrike is actively in contact with relevant Congressional Committees. Briefings and other engagement timelines may be disclosed at Members' discretion,” the spokesperson said.