Wrong signal
There's an alarming casualness to guarding America's most sensitive information
In a supermarket parking lot on March 15, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg sat in his car, eyes fixed on his phone, watching America's war plans against an Iranian proxy unfold in real-time. Two hours later, explosions rocked Yemen's capital city as U.S. bombs found their Houthi targets – precisely as the text message from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had detailed, right down to the weapons packages, locations, and timing.
The surreal scene wasn't the result of masterful journalism or deep-cover sources. Instead, it stemmed from perhaps the most mind-boggling national security breach in recent memory: National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had accidentally added Goldberg to a Signal chat group that included every senior member of Trump's national security apparatus, from Vice President JD Vance to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Goldberg wrote:
“I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.”
"Clean on OPSEC"
The cosmic irony of Hegseth – who previously argued Hillary Clinton deserved imprisonment for her private email server – declaring in the same chat that "we are currently clean on OPSEC" (shorthand for "operational security") would be comical if it weren't so alarming. This is the same Pete Hegseth who, as a Fox News commentator in 2016, solemnly intoned: "The people we rely on to do dangerous and difficult things for us rely on one thing from us: That we will not reveal their identity, that we will not be reckless with the dangerous thing they are doing for us."
Yet there he was, sharing classified operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen with 18 people – including, unknowingly, a journalist – on a commercial messaging app. While Signal is known as a secure messaging app with end-to-end encryption, the chat still bypassed the government's secure communications infrastructure entirely.
National security experts are unified in their assessment: this wasn't just sloppy – it was potentially criminal. Several former officials say using Signal for classified communications could violate multiple provisions of the Espionage Act.
The roots of this cavalier approach trace directly to the top. Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for traditional guardrails, redefined presidential technology norms from day one.
While former President George W. Bush didn't even use a cell phone as president and President Barack Obama's specially modified BlackBerry couldn't take pictures or send texts, Trump insisted on keeping his commercial iPhones despite repeated warnings that foreign intelligence services were listening to his calls. His rapid social media posts, constant texting with friends and casually discussing sensitive matters on unsecured phones – bypassing the White House switchboard entirely – established a clear message throughout his administration: convenience trumps security.
The sausage-making of national security
Beyond the security breach itself, the texts reveal fascinating fault lines within Trump's cabinet. Vice President Vance, so publicly loyal to Trump that his acquiescence has become something of a Washington punchline, apparently harbored serious reservations about the Yemen strikes.
"I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now," Vance texted the group. "I just hate bailing Europe out again," he added later, arguing for a month-long delay to better prepare public messaging and assess economic impacts.
Hegseth's response was equally revealing: "VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC," he wrote, adding that America remains the only power capable of reopening shipping lanes through the Red Sea. The dismissive, all-caps contempt for key allies offers a sobering glimpse of how America's relationship with Europe is viewed by those with their fingers on the trigger.
Someone identified as "S M" – presumably Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – effectively shut down debate with a terse message that "the president was clear: green light," adding that the administration should extract economic concessions from Egypt and Europe in exchange for America's military intervention.
A crisis of competence
The bitter irony of this fiasco is impossible to ignore. Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server became a rallying cry for Trump and his supporters, who chanted "lock her up" at rallies. And let's be clear, Clinton did flout regulations to conduct State Department business on her private server, sometimes transmitting sensitive information, for which she was investigated by Congress and the FBI.
Yet Trump's team has moved beyond procedural violations into territory that puts lives directly at risk - treating classified war plans with less security than most Americans use for their fantasy football leagues and celebrating their success in the Signal chat by posting fist, American flag, and fire emojis.
This isn't a partisan observation. Republican Congressman Don Bacon, an Air Force veteran, acknowledged that anyone can mistakenly text the wrong person. "The unconscionable action," he told Axios, "was sending this info over non-secure networks."
Accountability?
The administration's response has been characteristically defiant. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the chat's authenticity in a statement to the media while simultaneously praising it as "a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials." Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed calls for accountability, stating there should be no disciplinary action for Waltz or Hegseth because "the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake."
President Trump claimed total ignorance when asked about the incident. "I don't know anything about it," he told reporters, before attacking the publication: "I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic. It's, to me, it's a magazine that's going out of business." Hegseth, landing in Hawaii Monday to the bombshell report, also tried to discredit Goldberg.
Luck and judgment
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this story is how much worse it could have been. Goldberg exercised remarkable restraint in withholding sensitive operational details from his reporting—a judgment even Fox News anchor John Roberts publicly commended.
Had Waltz mistakenly added a less scrupulous journalist – or worse, a foreign intelligence operative – to the group chat, American forces might have flown directly into prepared defenses. As Congressman Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger with three combat tours, told CNN: "If they were tipped off, we'd be looking for a pilot, or maybe, God forbid, a pilot could have died here."
There's an unmistakable culture of casualness permeating an administration that has positioned itself as the guardian of America's secrets. The Goldberg incident wasn't an isolated mistake but part of what Crow, a Democrat, called "a pattern of incidents" including "one of Elon Musk's employees plugging in a personal computer to a secure system" and "the potential transfer of personnel information from the CIA in an unclassified format to the White House."
We've witnessed the steady corrosion of information security in the White House. But this latest incident represents something far more dangerous: the complete normalization of conducting wartime operations via consumer apps, with the most sensitive military plans floating alongside cat videos and grocery lists in the digital ether.
The guardrails that once governed America's most sensitive secrets appear to have collapsed, with potentially catastrophic consequences for national security. As Democratic Senator Reed observed, this may represent "one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense" in modern American history. The question now is whether anyone will be held accountable – or if carelessness with America's most sensitive secrets has simply become the new normal.
Thank you, Ms. Labott, for this thorough commentary. I am appalled by what our government is doing right now. For some to keep pointing out the mistakes of past administrations is a total waste of time and a deflection of the dangers we are facing NOW. We’re supposed to learn from the past, and not use it as an excuse for perpetuating the mistakes today.
We are in an age of casual behavior. There was a time when you wore a tie to a graduation and other events requiring decorum. It has seeped into all aspects of life. So sad. Take care.