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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

#61

Post by neverokay »

tptacek wrote: post #37
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe your statement is accurate. [Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prov…

It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs) but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.

[flagged]

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

#62

Post by jacquesm »

tptacek wrote: post #23
dtquad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help. If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.

So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit. After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are super transactional and they were afraid they missed the moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as coin for exchange.

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

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cocacola1 wrote: post #51
krapp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

¯\(ツ)/¯ Plenty of people in Trump's own cabinet used private email servers too, but no one cared. As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.

I’m sort of surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet.

> surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet

There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).

The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.

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

#64

Post by burkaman »

neverokay wrote: post #54
lapcat wrote: post #27

> Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved. I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.

The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps. Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw com…

Of course they do, but you can't set official government apps to illegally delete messages after a week.

Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also -

> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.

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

#66

Post by alistairSH »

belter wrote: post #28
danso wrote: post #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 a…

Is this worst than using Top Secret documents as toilet paper? https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...

Possibly, yes, as these messages leaked details of ongoing military operations.

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

#67

Post by vwcx »

otterley wrote: post #38
llm_nerd wrote: post #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…

The top story on Fox News right now is "Trump allies move to prevent 'activist judges' from overstepping presidential authority." This story isn't even on the front page.

To be fair, it broke as an exclusive to the Atlantic about 180 minutes ago. The NYT now has it "above the fold" on their front page. Unlike a story coming directly from a public source, it sometimes takes a bit longer to spin up re-reporting on another outlet's scoop like this.

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

#68

Post by s1artibartfast »

tptacek wrote: post #40
bediger4000 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who cares? To a first approximation everybody who reads the NYT (really: any newspaper) opposes Trump. People obsess about NYT coverage decisions, but the NYT has approximately zero political influence in 2025. If education and engagement depolarize, that could change, but it hasn't yet.

IMO, political influence can be discussed in terms of directionality and substance, and both are relevant.

Directionality is short term and simplistic, Does it change how someone will vote or poll.

Substance explains why they vote or poll, and is relevant because it has downstream consequences in an evolving world.

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

#70

Post by alistairSH »

dbl000 wrote: 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?

How is that a plus? Maybe vs plain old SMS...

But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.

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