(Image via theatlantic.com)
Staff Writer: Gwen Pichette
Email: gpichette@umassd.edu
The nation is again in uproar as top United States national security officials sharing intelligence about plans for an upcoming military strike in Yemen were leaked—over text message.
The editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a group chat that was composed of U.S. national security officials, prompting the leak of highly sensitive information.
Goldberg has since released an article on the debacle, the opening lines capturing the absurdity of the situation:
“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
“I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
“This is going to require some explaining.”
Goldberg goes on to explain that he initially expressed skepticism over the authenticity of the chat, at first believing it to be a disinformation campaign that was intended to embarrass journalists.
That was not the case.
Goldberg claims that he received an invitation to Signal, the messaging app, from Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz .
The group chat, entitled “Houthi PC small group,” was composed of Peter Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence.
See part of the shocking text thread below (courtesy of The Atlantic).
Upon realizing that the chat was in fact authentic, Goldberg quickly left it, writing, “No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left — or, more to the point, who I was.”
One of the leaked text threads in particular has sparked controversy due to Waltz’s use of a fire emoji that was used to signify an air strike—an air strike which injured and killed civilians of Yemen.
Many have since called it tasteless and insensitive, like Senator Dick Durban of Illinois expressed his frustration on X, writing, “This is a serious life and death matter and should be treated as such.”
This security breach has since cast immense doubt on national security capabilities for the U.S. Allies have expressed concern that the intelligence-sharing could compromise their own safety.
Britain in particular is most at risk for U.S. security breaches. Britain works closest with the U.S. military out of other nations, and their intelligence network is directly intertwined with the Five Eyes Alliance, an alliance between the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
While Britain’s Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard confirmed that British personnel had not been put at risk, others remain unconvinced.
The leader of Britain’s opposition Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, is fearful that this breach reveals a detrimental lapse in national security and that “it could only be a matter of time until our own intelligence shared with them is also leaked,” which could ultimately “put British lives at risk.”
Neil Melvin, a security expert at defense of the Royal United Services, asserts that for American allies, “the alarm clock’s been ringing for a long time.”
Melvin then went on to say that this situation is involved “some of the most high-ranking U.S. officials seeming to display a complete disregard for the normal security protocols.”
But many high-ranking Republican U.S. officials don’t exactly see it that way.
Despite the screenshots of the text chain that was proven to be authentic, Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of Defense who was in the groupchat, merely said, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
Upon being informed of the security breach, President Trump himself shrugged it off, saying, “I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.” These words came before stating that the Atlantic journal was “not much of a magazine.”
Signal, as an encrypted messaging app, is believed to be more secure than traditional messaging apps but is not used for such high-level government communications between security officials.
Despite the outpouring of outrage from Democratic lawmakers, in a report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House has deemed the case of the leak “closed.”
Additionally, she mentioned that the National Security Council, the White House’s Counsel Office and even Elon Musk’s technical team will be investigating how Goldberg was added to the chat.