Is the cure to male loneliness… starting a group text to bomb the Houthis?
That’s one of the sarcastic questions posed in memes blowing up across military-focused social media after top Trump officials used Signal to discuss airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militants — an operational security violation, or OPSEC, almost certain to be career-ending or worse for a rank-and-file soldier.
Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz, and other top officials debated whether to strike Yemen in a group chat that mistakenly included Jeffery Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, who reported on the chaotic exchange. Goldberg reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared an attack plan, including the names of those being targeted, before the airstrikes on the encrypted app — raising concerns this practice could spoil the operation or endanger troops.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “there was no classified information as I understand it,” and Waltz added, “We have our legal teams looking at it.”
Signal has been widely used for years throughout lower military levels for communication. But even junior troops with access to top-secret materials, which could include pending missile strikes, have long known that communicating such sensitive details should only be done via government-provided secure lines, like SIPR (secure internet protocol router) email or phone, making the message exchange an intelligence gaffe of preposterous proportions.
The founder of Signal, Moxie Marlinspike, mocked the spillage.
“Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations,” he wrote in a post on X Monday.
Likely because of Signal’s popularity, the Pentagon released new guidance last week discouraging the app’s use even for everyday communications, NPR reported Tuesday. According to the memo NPR cites, “Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations,” the guidance read.
“The use of Signal by common targets of surveillance and espionage activity has made the application a high value target to intercept sensitive information.”
The memo was dated March 18, one week after the baffling Houthi chat began.
Memes circulating online poke fun at Hegseth, Vance, Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, all military veterans who presumably had to undergo annual cyber awareness while serving.
Many memes and users pondered whether the entire military would be required to brush up on OPSEC (operational security) classes and ask if the adage “different spanks for different ranks,” will continue to hold true.
Former CIA operations officer John Sipher called the move “worse tha[n] amateur” in a post on BlueSky. “It 100% provides Moscow information on US capabilities and personalities. Information they can use down the line or share with Iran — the Houthi enablers. It may provide ongoing access to some participants.”
“Member when all we had to worry about was some S2 dork bringing his cellphone into the scif?” asked one commenter, referring to personnel in ultra-secure areas known as sensitive compartmented information facilities. “Pepperidge farms remembers.”
“Text STOP to unsubscribe from war plan updates,” read another.
“Somewhere a US Army counterintelligence agent is having a minor breakdown over how he has a perfect new case study for his annual OPSEC brief but he won’t be able to use it for at least four years,” read yet another BlueSky post.
It’s unclear if Waltz, Hegseth, and other top leaders must take the same cyber awareness training that the rank and file are required to complete annually.
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