One misplaced line of code shut down half of America’s telephone network for nine hours. No hackers. No storm. Just a single “break” statement in the wrong place, and a recovery message that spread like a disease.
Doctor Warthan opens CASE FILE #001: the AT&T long-distance collapse of January 15th, 1990 — how the most reliable machine on Earth ate itself alive, the war room that couldn’t stop it, the hacker panic it ignited, and the mistake that changed how all software ships, forever.