The leak of top US officials’ deliberations over planning for this month’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen – revealed by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg who was accidentally invited to a chat group on the Signal messaging app – will be highly useful for hostile intelligence agencies.
The human factor
Organisations that rely on security protocols being enforced also rely by their nature on a shared sense of common responsibility.
The fact that 18 of Donald Trump’s most senior officials and advisers, including several with a military background who have served overseas and should have been aware of operational security requirements, used an app not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information will be seen as descriptive of their character and the nature of Washington’s current administration.
The displays of arrogance, recklessness and a belief that the normal rules do not apply will contribute to profiles of senior US decision-makers.
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Intelligence agencies will also be thinking about the security culture around such figures as the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth – who has faced allegations of sexual assault and heavy drinking – and what opportunities that presents.
Hegseth’s assurances in the chat group about guaranteeing “100% Opsec – operations security” and subsequent assertions of no wrongdoing will be seen as further evidence of exploitable flaws.
The medium is a message
The fact that a commercial chat service was used will not have gone unnoticed. While Signal is end-to-end encrypted, if it is used on insecure devices, those devices can be targeted by malware, for instance.
Conversations of this kind should be conducted in a secure, compartmentalised information facility (SCIF) or via a similar system designed for conversations where high security is required.
If critical information is being exchanged outside formal channels, it suggests that numerous technical vulnerabilities exist that can be targeted.
Hostile actors – not least China, which is viewed as particularly aggressive in its hacking efforts – will be looking for what other unauthorised and unsecured methods of communication are being used.
The known unknown
We know from the Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting of his presence in the group that there were decision-makers his publication did not identify and information about the attack plans that he believed was too sensitive to disclose.
The fact that this unreported information was shared insecurely means that it will also need to be treated as having been compromised, regardless of whether it has been accessed beyond Goldberg and the Atlantic’s staff.
How the Trump administration works
Perhaps one of the most significant elements in the leak is that we now have a detailed insight into the organisational chart for the Trump administration’s most sensitive military deliberations. While the identities of many of those in the chat group are unsurprising given their roles, their individual interactions with each other give clues to the hierarchy that exists.
Foreign governments will also be interested in what the chat indicates about disagreements within the group, not least the somewhat surprising revelation of dissent by the vice-president, JD Vance, over the timing of the attack, and his view that Trump may not be aware of inconsistencies in his own policies.
What you see is what you get
Friendly and hostile governments alike will also have learned that what Vance, Hegseth and others say in public – in disparaging Europe, for example – they say in private, too.
Any notion that the Trump administration’s bark is worse than its bite should be thoroughly disabused by the contempt expressed by Vance for Europe and by the transactional nature of the conversation.
- Guardian
