Summary
The Atlantic has published unredacted attack plans (non-paywall link) shared in a Signal group chat of senior Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg released the full texts after officials denied sharing war plans or classified information, arguing transparency was necessary amid accusations of dishonesty.
The leaked messages detailed U.S. military strikes targeting Houthis in Yemen.
The US military got so lucky here.
They’re lucky that the incompetence was exposed so early in the administration. Signal isn’t allowed on government phones, apparently, so this was all done with personal devices. We’ve already seen how many people have compromised phones with something like Pegasus installed. This is why secure government phones exist in the first place. Who knows how long some foreign spy agency might have been reading the group chat if they hadn’t done such a stupid leak.
They’re lucky that the guy accidentally included in the group chat was a responsible journalist, not some rando who’d stay in the group chat and just keep leaking this stuff, or someone who might have chosen to sell access to China or North Korea or something.
They’re lucky that the target was Houthi rebels, and not a near-peer nation state. Even with hours of advance warning, the Houthis probably wouldn’t have been able to shoot down F-18s. But 3+ hours is plenty of time for a more advanced enemy to set up an ambush.
Can you imagine how it feels to be one of the F-18 pilots reading this article, knowing how close you could have come to getting killed?
Trump has always carried a personal phone, which he has always refused to allow intelligence agencies to sweep for spyware. Every bad actor in the world knows what he says the instant he says it.
I wouldn’t be surprised of the NSA or a similar agency controls key cell “towers” near the White House and other places he often goes, Mar A Lago, etc. Even in normal times, that’s just good practice, but with Trump it might allow them to do some filtering or drop data strategically.
Yeah, except now the NSA is being run by a MAGA loyalist, so they probably haven’t figured that out yet. Besides, they’re all Russian operatives, they’re probably making it easier for the Commies to listen in.
The White House has been buggier than a tenement since the last HitlerPig administration.