Military officials are required to use government-approved compartmentalized environments like SCIFs for the highly sensitive information they handle.
SCIFs enforce strict “need-to-know” protocols, reducing the risk of unauthorized access, unlike chat apps where users can accidentally be added or hackers can force their way inside.
While Signal features the same kind of end-to-end encryption used by the US government, it can still be compromised. The app’s popularity among troops and government officials makes it a prime target for hacking groups, prompting the Pentagon to issue an advisory on the vulnerabilities of the digital platform just days before The Atlantic published its initial bombshell report.
“It was a chilling thing to realize that I’ve inadvertently discovered a massive security breach in the national security system of the United States,” Goldberg told NPR in the aftermath.
President Donald Trump downplayed the serious national security breach as a “glitch” and said that no classified information was discussed in the chat, which was called “Houthi PC small group,” PC standing for “principals committee.”
Hegseth doubled down on that particular point, arguing that “nobody was texting war plans” in the Signal chat. Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor who added Goldberg to the group, took “full responsibility” for the “embarrassing” security breach.
“There’s a difference between inadvertent release versus careless and sloppy, malicious leaks of classified information,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified during a congressional hearing.
In response to these characterizations of the chat, The Atlantic later released the messages almost completely unredacted to allow people “to reach their own conclusions” about the significance of the content.
The group chat included details like types of weapons to be used and expected times of impact, as well as strategic discussions over the duration of the operation.
“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisors included in nonsecure communications channels,” The Atlantic wrote in the follow-up report, “especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”
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