The Wire - August 6, 2026

Kind: captions Language: en This is the war for 2300 Zulu, August 6th, 2026. President's daily routine information cut off at 2200. Bottom line up front, air traffic control outage results in Minneapolis Center diverting most aircraft to other sectors. New CDC director confirmed by Senate. Iran reportedly strikes two tankers in Hormuz. Beginning with international events in the Middle East, Iranian targeting of merchant vessels has continued with two more vessels being struck this afternoon in these Strait of Hormuz. Iranian sources claimed that they struck the motor tanker Nisos Kia heading outbound and the tanker Nisos Khios heading inbound while the two vessels were being escorted by the United States through the southern Omani route. Analyst comment, these two strikes have not yet been confirmed by the UKMTO, but reporting regarding strikes on ships is ironically hit or miss at this point. If these ships were being escorted at the time, these strikes would be quite important, but this detail is the most questionable at this time. What is certain is that both vessels shut off their transponders when they got close to the Strait and the status of both vessels is not known. On the home front in Minnesota this afternoon, all flights at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport were grounded for several hours due to a communications issue with air traffic control. Most aircraft diverted to different air control sectors while Minneapolis Center was down and many delays were reported nationwide due to the cascading effects of an outage in a busy air corridor. The exact cause of the outage has not yet been disclosed. In Washington, D.C., the FAA is investigating air traffic control procedures at Ronald Reagan International Airport after an incident involving the president. Yesterday afternoon, Marine One lifted off from the White House grounds to transport President Trump to Joint Base Andrews to depart for Los Angeles. Normally, when Marine One flies this routine route, commercial aviation at Reagan is halted for a few minutes to provide a security standoff for presidential aircraft. Tuesday night, this did not occur and a civilian airliner passed within 1 mile of the president's helicopter. Analyst comment, in terms of security incidents, this is comparatively minor and no safety concerns came about. There was no risk of collision, but due to the extreme levels of caution that is in place with any presidential aircraft and the zero fail nature of the mission, ATC at Reagan making this mistake is concerning, especially in the context of the long list of aviation mishaps that have plagued this specific airport for the past few years. Also in Washington, yesterday the Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the CDC. Before this position, Schwartz was a clinician for the Coast Guard with her entire career being spent in the realm of creating and managing vaccine policy. Her latest position was to serve as the preventive medicine chief in the operational medicine readiness division at headquarters in Washington and was in charge of creating all vaccine policies for the Coast Guard. Her priority areas for vaccine management and administration have been in Haiti, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and more recently with the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Analyst comments for this wire, the confirmation hearings to get the CDC director position across the line were initially a bit uncertain as Schwartz's main interest is in the world of vaccines. As HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy has been extremely outspoken on the topic of vaccine policy management, most of her confirmation hearings involved senators questioning if she would continue the ways of the old guard at the CDC or if she would follow the newer policy initiatives of her boss and Secretary Kennedy, who most of the traditional bureaucracy opposes. After a few brief rounds of questioning, the Senate was satisfied with her answers and she was confirmed with the vote splitting mostly along party lines. This concludes the wire for 2300 Zulu, August 6th, 2026.