Because of the sensitivity of government and military intelligence, conversation, even unclassified conversation, between members of top government officials is supposed to happen over secure government channels. The Trump administration’s disregard for this protocol is coming into the limelight after top officials held a chat about upcoming strikes in Yemen on Signal, a public messaging app.
Signal is encrypted, meaning the messages cannot be deciphered before reaching the receiver’s phone. However, any security this may have have redeemed was cancelled out by the fact that the officials inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
The Trump Administration has dismissed the severity of this error, claiming that no classified information was shared. Following this announcement, Mr Goldberg published sections of the conversation that he was privy to, giving the world a rare view of the inner workings of US military planning.
As reported by the New York Times, members of the chat, who included Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shared detailed timelines of the air strikes. This information, had it been leaked by Mr Goldberg earlier, could have allowed the targets to escape or endangered American troops’ lives.
In an earlier message, Vance stated that he hates “bailing Europe out again,” and Hegseth contributed his “loathing of European free-loading,” calling it “pathetic.” These comments are not the first to be made by this administration insulting our European allies, but they certainly will cause further tension.
Other information shared included the name of an active CIA intelligence officer, whose name was not published by Mr Goldberg. The conversation also revealed the Vance initially challenged the decision to carry through with the strike, though later he stated that he fully supported the current government’s defense policy.
This leak was a lapse in government security that shocked the nation and the world, and put scrutiny on the ability of the Trump Administration to securely handle military operations and classified information.
