Bitcoin’s Bump, an AWS Outage & a Jewel Heist 10/20/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. This is Squawk Pod and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's episode, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on airport staffing as we enter day 20 of the government shutdown, plus his agenda as acting administrator of NASA. I love SpaceX. It's an amazing company. The problem is they're behind. They push their timelines out and we're in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term. So I'm going to open up the contract. And crypto's calling Anthony Scaramucci says thanks to the Bitcoin's price boost. If you were a long term holder of Bitcoin, you bought it 10 years ago, you get to the$100 ,000 number.

0:49A lot of guys look at that and say, OK, that was my number. Plus, the Amazon Web Services disruption that took down major websites and the French Museum jewel heist right out of the movies. You're like some James Bond villain that has some room with a bunch of... Put the merch around the neck. What's the great movie with Pierce Brosnan, right? He has it sort of kept away. It's Monday, October 20th. What is it? The Thomas Crown Affair. Thomas Crown Affair. And Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.

1:31I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here we go. It's a Monday. And last week, for all the news and the concern and the fraught, markets actually had a pretty good week. All the major averages saw their best week since August. And you did see some pretty serious pickup. At this point, all three of the major averages are less than 2 % from all-time highs. Treasury yields this morning, when I looked earlier, It looked like that. Yeah, the 10 year was back above 4%, 4.01%. The two year is at 347. Gold prices, which have been hitting a new high every day, just about. Year to date up by 62%.

2:09This morning up another 1.4 % to$4 ,274 an ounce. And then cryptocurrency boards, if you check out Bitcoin this morning, up by close to 2%, back to 111 ,000. And maybe worth watching the VIX, because the VIX did pick up that volatility index. A lot of concerns from investors out there. On Friday, we saw that index all the way up to 28.99. That's the highest level that it's been at since April this morning. It's back down to 20.79. But we have seen some increased volatility in recent sessions. Andrew? Let's get you caught up on what is a bit of a wild story, because some major websites and apps, they are coming back online.

2:51Just after Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage, took place overnight. Disrupted sites, including Perplexity, Snapchat, Disney Plus, Coinbase is on that list as well. Robinhood, Verizon, if you were going to the Wall Street Journal last night looking for news, and the McDonald's app, among many others. Some airlines customers also complained their reservations weren't showing up on the airlines' app that they weren't able to check in or drop off bags. Now, Amazon Web Services dashboard first reported issues affecting the East Coast, and that's the East region, at 3.11 a.m. Eastern Time.

3:28As of about 5.30 a.m., an update from AWS saying they're seeing significant signs of recovery. And I was on the Wall Street Journal website just in the last couple of minutes, and it does seem to be working, as does, by the way, CNBC.com. So I think that we are maybe out of the woods, Joe, but I don't know. And this is one of those things we talk about resiliency and just how important every, you know, how important these services ultimately are to our entire lives. It's quite incredible. Yeah, if you can't check a bag, that's like, which, I don't know if you guys saw the other news, begs the question whether RFK Jr.

4:08and Cheryl Hines checked any bags on their flight. I don't know if you guys saw it. Andrew saw it. Yeah. In economy, Cheryl Hines, RFK Jr., videos of them, like, walking in, totally accessible, people saying hi. And it was one of those planes with Andrew and Coach that has three seats on one side. And they were RFK Jr., not very chivalrous, but it's okay, though, took the window. Cheryl Hines was in the middle seat with someone next to her, and it got 118 ,000 likes. Good for them. They're just like us. You know that page in Us magazine, Just Like Us? Come on. Cheryl's like, Jesus. when I was an actress, she was kind of like this.

4:55But no, she was fine. She was fine. But gone are the days of the afterglow of Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm. No, I agree. I like that. You know, there's some jets that don't really have anything. Oh, some of the small ones? But this was not one of those. But yeah, so I just thought about that. I didn't know. So 118 ,000 likes or, yeah, I think likes, which is quite a few. You know, we had concerns about the show this morning with AWS because Zoom was one of the sites that was affected, and a lot of our guests are coming in by Zoom this morning. By Zoom. That was a concern. Back to how this ties us all together.

5:38It makes me think if I was, you know, at Amazon, they said, Joe, AWS is down. Can you come and take a look at it? And would you? Sure, pop the hood. What would you do, Andrew? I know what I would do. Kick it? No, take the plug, unplug it. Plug it back in? Unplug it and plug it back in. That's usually the move. Or log out or something. But there are people that can go in and apparently somehow, but that would not be me.

6:10Andrew, I don't want you to do anything except get a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen because I'm going to tell you what's on this. week's squawk planner. Tell me. So you can plan out your week. I'm listening. I'm listening. Key corporate earnings, Coca-Cola, Netflix, GM tomorrow, Wednesday, Tesla, IBM, AT &T. They had me on screen. Thursday. Yeah. And you weren't writing anything down. No, I wasn't. Thursday includes Intel, Ford, American Airlines. Friday morning, get this, Procter & Gamble is going to release results. We're also slated to get, this we could actually use, a September Consumer Price Index report on Friday.

6:54It's been delayed because of the government shutdown. It's likely the last major piece of data that Fed members are going to see before next week's interest rate decision. They decided this one was important enough to actually bring people in, like emergency workers to do this. Of those key earnings names that Joe was talking about, one we'll be watching later today is Zion's Bancorp. That's the regional lender. It's set to report third quarter results after the bell. Investors got anxious last week about the regional banks when Zions disclosed a near total wipeout on$60 million in loans after finding what it called apparent misrepresentations from borrowers.

7:31The next day, fellow regional Western alliance said that it had sued the same borrower for alleged fraud. The SPDR S &P regional banking ETF fell more than 6 % on Thursday. That was its worst day since April, but it did rebound a bit on Friday, up by about 1.6%. Thieves making off with priceless jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris. So familiar to us, right, guys? During the Olympics last time, we were fortunate enough to attend the most incredible function there right on the balcony. Was that the coolest function ever? We could have walked off with this stuff ourselves, Joe. theoretically well and remember we were two feet away from the Mona Lisa we could just grab that thing and in and run but what I can say the other room somewhere where we have fenced it Joe this is your question I've been finishing black rabbit and I don't know where I would have fenced this stuff I've been thinking more about that Andrew um let me tell first we'll talk about what happened then we'll talk about that because that beautiful crown with how many diamonds it gorgeous I mean you can't What are you going to wear around the house?

8:41You can't, number one, if you did take out the individual stones and ruin that thing, you should get the death penalty. But number two, if... It's not going to be worth anything. It's not going to be worth nearly as much. If you just keep it as is, you're like some James Bond villain that has some room with a bunch of... You can march around with it. Yeah, like at a modern, whatever they are, chemical crap romance. The robbery at the world's most visited museum yesterday took just minutes to complete and came during regular museum hours, but they used like a lift in a basket, broke the window, went in, broke the case, left the thieves, rode up this basket, right to the facade of the Louvre, forced a window open and smashed it.

9:23Yeah, which we've seen if you walk by it. That is McDonald's right across the street, I know that. Before making off of the jewels, authorities say a stolen crown containing more than 1 ,300 diamonds was later found outside. The Louvre has been struggling with larger crowds and stretched workers lately, and staff walked out in June because of overcrowding and chronic understaffing. But let's say you buy these things and you're like a billionaire. You can't even show any. You can't even say, look what I have, I don't think. If you have them in a room, what do you do? Just go spend some time? Right around naked with them on your own.

9:57Yeah, with your jewels. With the crown on. It's funny where her mind goes. So if she had... Literally, what are you going to do with that? Is that what you do? No, I wouldn't want these things. But what do you do with them? Seriously, or any... I guess even with a masterpiece, let's say you had that, you could go and just enjoy it and look at it. That's weird. It is weird. What's the great movie with Pierce Brosnan, right? He has it sort of kept away, right? Does he? Yeah, I don't know exactly what you're talking about, So that's, I'm sure it's been, what is it? Oh, the Thomas Crown Affair. Thomas Crown Affair.

10:35Thomas Crown Affair. He has it. He just keeps it to look at. So you could. It's weird. It is weird. Art should be shared. It should. I think any beautiful thing. Have you ever gone someplace by yourself and wished your family was there? Like anything beautiful that you see is less beautiful and less special if you don't have people to share it with. And if you, really, if you take out, like even some of the necklaces and the sapphires. The sapphires are pretty, I will say. You ruin that. But you destroy the value because the history is that. You destroy the value, and it's just your... It's a Napoleonic era.

11:05You have no soul, really, if you do that and sell them piecemeal or something. So I'm not in favor of this. I guess that's the bottom line. Good to know. I don't think it's like, I don't know, sort of. I don't admire, I don't think pulling off a jewel heist is cool. There is some romanticism. Not cool, man. Not cool. You think of Ocean's Eleven as well. This is not cool, man.

11:34Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, it's day 20 of the government shutdown. While a stalemate wears on in Washington, some airport staff around the country scrambling to make ends meet. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The next check that comes for air traffic controllers are a week from tomorrow. And I think we could see more disruptions when that happens. A lot of them have made the point they have to find other ways to feed their families, whether they're going to drive Uber or they're going to find other some some short term employment.

12:09This is Squawk Pod with Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tomorrow will be three weeks. It's day 20 of the government shutdown. Air traffic controllers are continuing to work without a paycheck. Joining us now with the latest Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. Secretary, it's good to see you. You haven't had a lot of individuals. It's not called a blue flu. I don't know what we'd call it, but some are not coming in. It's still safe at this point? Yeah, so first, thank you to all our air traffic controllers who do show up for work. We've had a few blips, Joe, in the system where, you know, in one region, one day, another region, Another day we'll have some delays because air traffic controllers are out.

12:52There's been some more sick leave than we've seen in the past. But I'm telling you what, looking forward, the next check that comes for air traffic controllers are a week from tomorrow. And I think we could see more disruptions when that happens. A lot of them have made the point they have to find other ways to feed their families, whether they're going to drive Uber or they're going to find some short-term employment. We could see some more disruption. I don't want to see that. I think that would be difficult for the traveling public. But, you know, this is the consequence of a long term shutdown.

13:24We're 20 days in. Republicans have said, let's do a clean CR. Democrats have said, you know what, we want to negotiate on health care, specifically health care for illegals. And Republicans don't really have any room to negotiate because they've done what's clean, what they what they had in September. Republicans want to have in October. And so there's not room to negotiate. Really, Democrats have to come to the table. Stop holding the economy hostage. If it keeps going, and I don't know how long we go, but some you could see more maybe, as you described, doing other things because they have to feed the family.

13:58Will they be gone when you say you want dedicated and the best air traffic controllers around? You would some of them be let go for for not showing up? Are you the ability to do that? I do have the ability to do that. A vast majority of them are amazing controllers, American servants. They wear American flag Pell pins on their chests. We do have a few locations where there's more problems, consistent problems, even when we didn't have the shutdown. And again, I want the best controllers that are dedicated to the work that they do. And if we see a pattern of people not showing up or when things are difficult, they call in sick, I think those are people we should look at.

14:38But again, these are a critical part of our safety apparatus in the air. And I need more of them, not less of them. I'm about two to three thousand short right now. So I'm trying to add to the number, not subtract from the number. How about TSA? It's been mentioned on the show more than a few times that previous shutdowns have come to an end because of the possible impact on the economy, the negative impact if you don't, if you're not flying, if if it's severely hampered. And TSA is the same situation as air traffic controllers, it seems. They're very similar, but TSA falls under Homeland Security.

15:15Kristi Noem has TSA. But I think the analysis is the same. People who do critical jobs for the economy not being paid for those jobs. But I've been part of a number of shutdowns over the course of my tenure in Congress. And no one even in Congress knows when it's going to end. There's a certain energy and fuel that has to burn. And I think once more Americans become sick of the hassle of not having their government open, that's when the pressure comes. And I think Democrats will come to their senses and say, OK, let's open this thing back up. Let's have a conversation. Let's negotiate and talk when the government is funded.

15:52I think that's where we're going to get to, whether it's going to be in five days or five weeks. I'm not sure. It's a different world with you in charge, obviously. I can remember I can't try to figure out. I finally understood what a racist bridge was, because if you don't use infrastructure funds to connect certain community, I can sort of get there. But it was pretty crazy. You're willing to fire or at least you're willing to withhold 40 million dollars. if California doesn't require truck drivers to be proficient in the English language? Yeah, that's a really good point. So this has been a longstanding rule in America that if you're going to be a truck driver, you're going to drive an 18-wheeler, you're going to drive a school bus, you have to be proficient in the English language.

16:41So you've got to be able to speak English and you have to understand road signs. It goes back decades. It's just that the rule was not being enforced. And so we're now enforcing the rule because we've seen a number of crashes where, And again, these drivers, they can't read road signs. If there is a crash, they can't communicate with law enforcement. And so every state has complied, all of them except California, which is baffling to us because, again, they should be just as concerned about safety as the rest of us. Now, the problem is if you get a CDL, a commercial driver's license in California, that license is not just for California.

17:13You can drive anywhere in the 50 states. And so these drivers from California who aren't proficient in English drive across the country. Now, other states, if they pull over those drivers, they'll flag them as not being proficient in English, and they'll take them out of service. Again, when these big rigs are taken out of service, it costs a lot of money to get a driver back in and start to move the load. So it's a significant penalty. We hope California gets on board. We've taken$40 million away from them. We also have they've also issued a lot of CDL licenses to those who are not here lawfully or they'll issue a driver's license for five years.

17:52But the work permit for the migrant is only one year. So it extends well beyond the work permit, which encourages those who who are here maybe with a work permit to stay beyond the work permit because they have a driver's license. California has to do a lot of work in looking back at their system where they gave illegal driver's licenses and revoked those. Again, this is just about safety, though, Joe. It's not about politics. It's about making sure our roads are safe. I know NASA is under your purview as well. Exciting about the Artemis, too. You're making strides there. Less emphasis on the climate crisis now at NASA?

18:32I can't imagine the carbon footprint for this. Are you thinking through these things? There's a lot of agencies that can deal with climate. There's only one that does human space exploration, and that's NASA. And that's what we've refocused on. So in the first part of next year, Artemis II is going to go out to the moon and back. They're not going to land this time, but this is the first time in 54 years we're going back to the moon. We actually right Right now, down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, we have the rocket alongside the capsule where it's going to hold our astronauts. We're about to merge those two together.

19:07We do the final testing. We think the original timeline was doing this launch in April. We think we can do it in early February, which is really cool. Artemis 3 comes a couple of years after that. Now SpaceX had the contract for Artemis 3. By the way, I love SpaceX. It's an amazing company. The problem is they're behind. They push their timelines out and we're in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term. So I'm going to open up the contract. I'm going to let other other space companies compete with SpaceX like Blue Origin. And again, whatever one can get us there first to the moon, we're going to take.

19:51And if SpaceX X is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them. Good on Blue Origin. But by the way, we also might have two companies that can get us back to the moon in 2028. But again, we're not going to wait for one company. We're going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese, get back to the moon, set up a camp, a base. And from there, we're going to figure out how we can actually get to Mars. Okay. We're like out of time. And no one's going to accuse me of wasting our substantive time on superfluous stuff. So we're already out of time. So now I'm just stealing time from something else.

20:28Can you just describe, you, world champion, how big was the pole that you climbed? Were you on a 60 or 90 footer? Did you win the world championship? You go up with spike shoes and like, I guess, I've seen people do that in these lumberjack sports. Was it a 90 footer? And how quickly did you go up and down? I won them both, the 60 and the 90 footer. It's a, you have little spurs on your feet and you have a steel core hemp rope. It's a race up and then it's a race back down. And so it takes about, you know, 16 seconds to get up and about four seconds to come down, three and a half seconds to come down.

21:03It is like the bull riding of the rodeo, the great sports of the old time lumberjack. By the way, this is the most Americana sport you can find. Again, it's these men and women who helped, you know, log our great white pine regions in Wisconsin, Minnesota, to Michigan that then these sports develop from, and again, it's a throwback to the turn of the last century. Becky couldn't believe you could do 60 feet in 12 seconds. He did 90 feet, and then you come down in four, so you're basically almost free fall. Yep, free fall. I just thought Becky knows I was a lot younger and a lot thinner back in the day.

21:39No, I've been looking up videos of this since he mentioned this earlier. Sununu told me about, Sununu was on last week, and he told me about this. And I'm, you know, I'm afraid of... By the way, he's doing a great job at A4A for the airlines. Sununu was a great pick, and he's doing a wonderful job actually taking that organization forward. So he's been a great partner for us at DOT as well. Okay. Is that a Wisconsin thing? The whole lumberjack thing? Is that... So a lot of West Coast climbers, a lot of big trees out there. A lot of choppers and sawyers that come from Australia and New Zealand.

22:15Log rolling as well, the log in the water, two people on it competing back and forth. That's more of a North American sport. A lot of Canadians compete also. So you get these four countries that come together and they have this, you know, who's the king of the forest? Who's going to win these all-around titles? So listen, if you haven't seen one, you should actually go check one out. And by the way, for all your great viewers that have money, if you want to sponsor one, even better, give some money to these great competitions, keeping them alive and the great men and women who compete. as pitch by Joe, like that?

22:45Yeah, I do. I'm going to say thank you, and I'm going to toss it over to Andrew that those are two of the things, that's one of the things we will never say in our life, I think, Andrew, right? That we won some lumberjack, you know, when I'm on that ladder changing the light bulb, I'm scared almost to death. So, Mr. Secretary, thank you. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. It's just not us, Andrew. We do all the things. It's not on our bingo card. We're not built for it, Joe. We're not. I wish we were. I wish we were. Next on Squawk Pod, the Mooch on where to put your money. Investor Anthony Scaramucci on Bitcoin's rise and increased importance in portfolios, as well as the U.S.

23:31dollar's global strength. More dollars and a growing economy, plus the stable coin technology that's out there now, plus the military strength that the United States has, I think it's going to be nearly impossible to knock it off its ledge. We'll be right back.

23:53Welcome back to Squawk Pod. Up in Andrew, Q. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC on a Monday morning. I'm Andrew Osorkin, along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. We've got a lot going on. Bitcoin bouncing off its recent lows, gaining ground this morning. Join us now, Anthony Scaramucci, Skybridge Capital founder, managing partner, Anna Capricorn. Just actually talking about that. Big birthdays coming up. Big birthdays. That's right. You guys share our birthdays. We share our birthdays. January 6th. Eric Trump. Yeah. Henry Kravis. Henry Kravis. Norman Reedus, dude. Yeah, I remember Norman Reedus.

24:31walking dead. A giant in my life. You mentioned my birthday is really not until I don't have to worry about it until next year. It's not a this year thing. We don't have to worry about it until next year. You're looking good, Joe. Just got to keep your hair. That's the key. I know. We're going to get to Bitcoin immediately, but I go to great lengths to keep this hair. I do. And I make a lot of sacrifices for this drug, Propecia, whatever the hell it is. It's good for your prostate. Hey, listen, Bitcoin last week once again proved it's not a non-correlated asset. You cannot go there, like for gold, or you can't go there if you're worried about a risk-off trade with the NASDAQ because you're just, I don't know, you're going to be subject to what happens in a sell-off in the stock market if you have Bitcoin, it seems like.

25:21Has that ever changed? I think it's some of that. I think it'll eventually transition, but I think if you look at long-term technicals, it is tied to risk assets, is tied to the NASDAQ. I think it's more whale selling. If you look at those big wallets. If someone needs to sell something, does it become a place for liquidity and a downdraft with the stock market? But again, I think it's big whales. If you were a long-term holder of Bitcoin, you bought it 10 years ago, you get to the$100 ,000 number, a lot of guys look at that and say, OK, that was my number. Someday, if Bitcoin ever gets to 100 ,000, I'm going to liquefy Bitcoin and diversify it into other things.