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Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) was in the middle of a speech about an SEC regulation on the House floor at 2:30pm ET when the picture switched to an RT newscast from Moscow.
Deadspin editor Timothy Burke was the first to note the incident, which he tweeted about, saying that it was "unclear what happened."
Speculation and conspiracy theories went viral on Twitter after the event happened, with some saying that it was a hack and others calling it cyber warfare.
"We are operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue," C-SPAN said in a statement, adding that RT is one of the networks that they regularly monitor, and that they are "investigating the occurrence."
RT had no way of cutting into the C-SPAN broadcast.
The entire broadcast footage from C-SPAN can be viewed without interruption on their site.
I don't think RT can do it on its own. Cable operators like Verizon, time warner can do this either central level or local level.