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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

theatlantic.com

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Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#11
Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen.

> At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#12

Is it wild that a 3rd party app like Signal is used for this type of communication? I feel like that's crazy.

From the story:

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#15
The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:

On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.

> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."

So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#16
It’s actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.

Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#17
post #9

This was such a weird news story to read. At least they used Signal? That's gotta be a plus at some level. Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?

The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified information.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#18
This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence, not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about American exceptionalism.

It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.

Also...but her emails!

Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.

Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#20

The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying: On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit. > "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extr…

The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not Europe. Vance knows that.

J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.

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