Go easy on the old guy. It sounds to me like he was completely correct, at the appropriate level of abstraction for him.

And as for cosmic rays...this may be a sensitive topic for you (or maybe you're just in a condescending mood), so I'll tread carefully, but seems simple to me.

The actual cause of the problem, given the instrumentation in place at the time of incident, is unknowable. But it might have been a subatomic particle. It absolutely definitively is, sometimes.

Metonymy might be imprecise, but it's human. I'm not sure what standard you intend to hold commenters here (or old guys with computers) to.