Current and former government technologists reacted with shock and disbelief to reports that top Trump Administration officials used the consumer messaging app Signal to discuss and plan bombing strikes against Yemen-based Houthis.
The private chat group included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. It came to public attention after its organizer, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, inexplicably invited Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to join the conversation—despite Goldberg being a frequent target of Donald Trump’s criticism. Goldberg says he witnessed the full strategy session, including detailed discussions of war plans and logistics.
Using a nonsecure consumer messaging app for sensitive government work is neither normal nor smart, according to several current and former government technologists.
“I’d never use Signal if something was classified,” says Kate Green, who worked at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) until late last year. “There’s so many risks in communicating about classified information that you don’t mess around with that. You use approved channels for that.”
Green explains that government agency security departments configure government-issued phones to prevent users from installing commercial apps like Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp. “My work phone was very locked down and managed by them,” she says.
“So they were using Signal either on their personal devices, or they were using it on government phones that weren’t being managed by the rules of the agencies they were part of,” Green says of the administration officials on the “Houthi” chat.
“No one I know would’ve been this reckless talking about sensitive matters on a nongovernment system,” says another government technology leader, who until very recently worked within USDS. “I can’t imagine any professional I know committing this egregious a lapse in judgement.”
“It’s a hard line we don’t cross for obvious ethical and legal reasons,” adds the ex-USDS source, “but also the logistics of personal devices getting subpoenaed and FOIA’d [accessed via a Freedom of Information Act request] would be terrible.”
(Another ex-government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, says people within her agency—until recently, the Office of Management and Budget—received ethics training during their first month of employment, along with extensive instruction on the proper ways to communicate about government matters.)
Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated the obvious during a contentious hearing of the same committee Tuesday. “Classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system,” he said. “If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired.”
Matthew Mittelsteadt, cybersecurity and emerging technologies expert at the Cato Institute, says the security of encrypted messaging apps like Signal is only as strong as the security of the end devices used to access them. “In the specific case of Signal, messages may be secure when they are in transit between phones,” he says, “but once they reach the recipient, security can indeed fail.” He points out that just last month, Google Threat Intelligence found actors backed by Russia’s GRU were actively exploiting Signal’s “linked devices” feature to eavesdrop on target individuals’ messages once they reached the individual’s inbox.
As it happened, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was on a trip to Moscow during the Signal chat in question, which spanned several days. Republican Representative from Nebraska Don Bacon, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said there’s “no doubt” that Russia and China were monitoring the devices of the U.S. officials on the “Houthi” text chat.
Waltz claims that the Signal chat group discussed no secret war plans, nor was any classified material shared. Goldberg bluntly denied Waltz’s claim during a CNN interview Monday: “That’s a lie. He was texting war plans,” he said.
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