The Signal and the Noise
The Trump administration somehow found a way to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory.
If you’ve been following the news this past week, there has been one singular story that has driven the news cycle. The venerable, if now highly-biased, magazine The Atlantic released an article on Monday titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans,” which has dominated the political scene ever since. The piece is well-described by its title. What happened is that the key members of the Trump national security team, from the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense to the Vice President and the head of the CIA, discussed planning for an attack on the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen in a group chat to which they inadvertently added the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. In that Signal chat – in case you were wondering, Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging app – the administration figures discussed timing of military strikes, the targets of said strikes, and how to frame them within a broader Trump policy. The strikes themselves were carried out successfully, degrading Houthi infrastructure and killing key leaders, about a week before Goldberg released his story.
After first declaring that the texts included in Goldberg’s story were legitimate, members of the administration, particularly Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have since pushed back on what they claim is a nothing-burger of a story. They have called Goldberg a lying, biased hack (accurate!) who vastly overstated the story, which should be ignored anyways (inaccurate!). Since then, Goldberg released a follow-up with more of the chat logs included that prove his original contentions largely correct. Still, Hegseth and other officials are downplaying the story and claiming it is false, which has led the whole thing to continue on as a live matter for the politics of the day. The whole debacle – and that is absolutely what this is – has generated many immediate takeaways that obscure the more important underlying reality.
First, we need to deal with the elephant in the room: was there any classified or secret information shared on this group chat? This is the 500-pound gorilla of the story (I went to the zoo recently, can you tell?) because it is the primary defense from MAGA as to why this whole news cycle is nothing more than a hoax. Hegseth and others argue that they did nothing more on the thread than discuss foreign policy within what they believed was a closed and secure group. They say that the idea that they shared ‘war plans’ was absurd and totally untrue. You can take a minute to skim both stories for yourself (linked above) and see if you think this characterization is appropriate. I’ll wait.
You’re back? Good.
As you can tell, the characterization is not even remotely close to being appropriate. The members of the chat discussed, in detail, the timing, targets, and outcomes of US strikes in real-time. They included the specific air and naval assets being used in the attack, mentioned information that could compromise intelligence sources and methods, and discussed private talks held with other nations. They detailed the plan of attack well before it was carried out. This information would absolutely be classified and is certainly highly sensitive. Various former Defense officials agree. It would certainly be very useful if it was intercepted by a foreign adversary. And had Goldberg published his story before the strikes occurred, they would have been scuttled based on the leaked information. That alone proves it is sensitive data. As does another aspect of this constantly-unfolding mess: the fact that some of the talk about a particular Houthi target was based on intelligence from the Israelis, collected by a human source on the ground. The release of this information could very well compromise that source and several others in Yemen, an area where we have little reliable on-the-ground intel. Despite what the defenders claim, the information discussed in that chat was quite probably classified and most definitely sensitive.
Next, we need to touch a bit on what Signal is and how it can properly be used in government work, as the administration’s defenders argue that it is perfectly acceptable and even better than the pre-existing government options. (Disclaimer: I use Signal myself and find the app quite useful for encrypted messaging.) Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that can automatically delete past messages if set up to do so. It is used by journalists, businessmen, and a wide variety of people who wish to keep their communications secure through a user-friendly app. It is absolutely great for those use cases. Signal may have some security vulnerabilities – the Russians and Chinese have been said to have found flaws in the app itself – but this is as yet unconfirmed, and it is strenuously denied by Signal itself. The Biden administration, just before leaving office, did send out a memorandum stating that Signal use by government employees and officials was permissible, in certain instances. This was not one of those instances.
Sensitive information like that detailed in the Houthi text chain belongs nowhere near Signal. The CISA directive on Signal use in government said that it should be used for anodyne purposes, like setting up a meeting, not setting up a major series of airstrikes on a foreign terrorist enemy. We have long-standing government technologies and processes for sharing classified information and doing military planning, including dedicated phone channels, secure locations, and even some messaging options. This is the appropriate way to prepare a strike package against an adversary, not on a free, publicly-available messaging app. In fact, had they used the proper channels, it would never have been possible for Goldberg to have been inadvertently included. (As an aside, developing a fully secure, encrypted, bespoke government messaging system would be a much more suitable task for the DOGE techies than is their current project of misreading government documents.)
Even if Signal is totally secure in its encrypted messaging, the phones on which it is being used may not be. Adversarial hackers have routinely penetrated phone networks and personal safeguards by phishing scams, targeted attacks, and large-scale data-theft operations. Just last December, it was revealed that a Chinese spy network had stolen reams of phone data from providers, including actual call logs and voice data. Signal can be impenetrable, but the messages still reside on an individual’s phone. It is even easier for these sorts of targeted attacks to work if the individual is in the attacking nation; top diplomat and all-around clown Steve Witkoff, who was on the chain, was in Moscow at the time. Yes, the same Moscow that has worked to support the Houthis and has a close partnership with their patron in Iran.
Another factor is that Signal itself is not accessible or open to government archive rules, allowing messages shared on it to be permanently deleted with no archival record. This could let top government officials avoid scrutiny in their internal deliberations by obscuring the very fact of their existence, easing corruption and reducing transparency. In fact, this was the exact argument made (correctly) by MAGA types regarding Hillary Clinton’s private bathroom server on which she kept her government messages and classified information. They pilloried Hillary for doing this to avoid records requests and oversight, yet it is not much different from the actions taken by Trump officials. Even if there was no intent to engage in impropriety, the appearance of such is equally disastrous. And, as a historian, the worst part is that the ephemeral nature of Signal makes future Americans less able to understand what actually happened in their nation’s past. We rely on archival records, personal correspondence, audio recordings, secret memoranda, and other such sources to enlighten us about what actually happened at the highest levels of government, yet this is all lost if the material is expunged. That is not only a shame for human knowledge, but for our ability to learn from our shared past, particularly in geopolitics.
The aforementioned facts make this whole thing into the debacle that it very obviously is. The biggest problem for the Trump administration is that it was a completely unforced, self-inflicted error. Closing down this story in all but liberal media circles would have been incredibly easy had they just done one thing: admitted fault and pivoted hard. The first part is easier said than done when your boss is President Trump, a man infamous for never admitting guilt, but it should not be supremely difficult. The principals involved in the chat, namely Waltz (who added Goldberg inadvertently) and Hegseth (who shared the bulk of the sensitive information), could have simply stated that they were engaged in what they believed was a private, secure chat to discuss operational details of what ended up being a successful strike and that they will take concrete steps to ensure this is not repeated. And if they emphasized the meat of the matter – that the attack against the Houthis was successful on its own terms – they would be able to put this embarrassing spectacle behind them. Instead, the doubling down has kept it in the news while simultaneously obscuring the actual positive action that the process story revolves around.
The Biden administration did an utterly terrible job dealing with the Houthi threat to merchant and naval vessels, opting to play an extremely expensive defense instead a far more effective (both cost-wise and operationally) offense. That weak strategy incentivized further attacks, emboldened the Iranian regime that backs the Houthis, and resulted in the longest running battle the US navy has fought since 1945. The Trump administration has reversed this failed policy and is taking the fight to Yemen, battering a piratical force in the manner that American presidents have used since the very foundation of the Republic. Spending relatively little money to beat down Islamic terrorist pirates that hate Israel, love Iran, attack random ships, make goods more expensive by disrupting trade, and try to sink American naval vessels is quite possibly one of the popular things this administration could do right now. This is the reality that has been obscured by the incompetence and stubbornness of the Trump administration. Ironically enough, Signal is the noise in this case, whereas the fact of these anti-Houthi actions is the signal.
I would love to be able to simply cheer an unambiguously good foreign policy choice by the White House, but they just can’t get out of their own way. And we’re all worse off for it.