Trump’s Defense Secretary Accidentally Texted War Plans to The Atlantic: ‘I Didn’t Think It Could Be Real,’ Editor Says

[FireDragon76]

War planning by 6th graders.

 

[mark46]

Signal is secure for your average hacker. I would not have the same assumption for a state actor.

Alas, we now know the Trump Administration is making consequential decisions (military action) on a platform that could be compromised and provides no official record of their action.

There is little doubt that state actors listen in on phones of key Americans. Secure SKIFs can be set up in a few minutes. There are security protocols.

And just BTW, we are talking about more than strategy and policy. The Secretary shared the nature of targets, methods and timeline. Of course, no one should be surprised. This is what happens when the Secretary is inexperienced and has no one with experience giving him security advice. Finally, before sharing, he said the magic words that security protocols were being followed so state secrets can be shared on the call.

Someone's resignation should be accepted.

 

[mark46]

Should we really expect more security from the staff of a man who stored boxes of top secret materials in his hotel bathroom?
Obviously security isn't a focus.

This is different. It is a military operation where many US lives are in jeopardy.

 

[The Liturgist]

War planning by 6th graders.

Have you evaluated the plan? What aspects of it seemed amateurish to you?

Because there are two separate issues here, the plan itself, and its disclosure.

The intentional disclosure of military plans for strategic reasons is a well established tactic, which during WWII was engaged in by the Allies on multiple occasions, most famously, with Operation Mincemeat, which is believed to have been conceived by ian Fleming, in order to deceive the Germans into thinking that an invasion of Greece was imminent, so that resources would be diverted to there from Sicily ahead of the invasion of that island by the allies led by Montgomery and Patton.

Later in the war, a much larger scale deception was used, which convinced the Germans that the allies would land at Calais in an invasion force led by Patton (who the Germans believed was the most formidable US general), when in fact the landings on D-Day occurred in Normandy, and the Germans were unprepared in that sector, as they had not adopted the advice of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to move artillery units to the coastal areas in order to repel any potential landings. This deception was aided by the fact that the allies would have to fight their way through the hedgerows of Normandy, which did slow them down quite a bit initially, before breaking out into the open terrain leading to Paris, so in all respects Calais would have been a better place to land, except the same utility in breaking out for it would also have been afforded to the Germans in terms of responding to an invasion from Calais.

So in order to describe this plan as “war planning by sixth graders” it must be established, both that the plan was not leaked intentionally (which would be rather difficult) and that the plan itself was technically incompetent, which would require a qualified opinion by trained military officers. We do have some veterans of officer grade on ChristianForums, are you among that number? Or perhaps you worked at the Pentagon or the DIA as an intelligence analyst who studies such plans on a professional level?

There are legitimate mistakes made by any administration, but as I see it the criticism here on this particular issue is misguided.

 

[Fantine]

This is different. It is a military operation where many US lives are in jeopardy.

And Trump's absconding with hundreds of boxes of secrets didn't put US lives in jeopardy?

 

[Bradskii]

You know, leaking a detailed plan of invasion has been successfully used in the past as a psy-op technique. If you convince an enemy you are serious about destroying them, you may avoid the need for an actual military conflict.

Seeing as the US has the largest military in history, I think a quick message to the bad guys would be sufficient. Misinformation has been used as a ploy. But nobody is going to give the enemy detailed information of what you're actually going to do (well, apart from Hegseth). Notwithstanding that giving details of exactly what you are going to do and when you are going to do it puts lives at risk.

 

[The Liturgist]

Seeing as the US has the largest military in history, I think a quick message to the bad guys would be sufficient. Misinformation has been used as a ploy. But nobody is going to give the enemy detailed information of what you're actually going to do (well, apart from Hegseth). Notwithstanding that giving details of exactly what you are going to do and when you are going to do it puts lives at risk.

Police tell people exactly what tactics will be used against them routinely. And in the case of the Houthis, a military action against them by the US has the same kind of power gradient as the police responding to a barricaded man armed with say, an automatic rifle. For although the Iranians gave them enough weapons to terrorize shipping companies, they have not given them enough to pose a true strategic military threat to the US. Rather, they constitute a tactical nuissance.

 

[Bradskii]

Police tell people exactly what tactics will be used against them routinely.

Yeah, of course. If there's an armed guy holed up in a bank then the police would routinely call them to say that someone is going to break down the back door as a diversion in exactly 20 minutes, stun grenades will be thrown through the front windows and then armed police will enter simultaneously though the two side doors. Happens all the time.

 

[Nithavela]

Have you evaluated the plan? What aspects of it seemed amateurish to you?

Because there are two separate issues here, the plan itself, and its disclosure.

The intentional disclosure of military plans for strategic reasons is a well established tactic, which during WWII was engaged in by the Allies on multiple occasions, most famously, with Operation Mincemeat, which is believed to have been conceived by ian Fleming, in order to deceive the Germans into thinking that an invasion of Greece was imminent, so that resources would be diverted to there from Sicily ahead of the invasion of that island by the allies led by Montgomery and Patton.

Later in the war, a much larger scale deception was used, which convinced the Germans that the allies would land at Calais in an invasion force led by Patton (who the Germans believed was the most formidable US general), when in fact the landings on D-Day occurred in Normandy, and the Germans were unprepared in that sector, as they had not adopted the advice of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to move artillery units to the coastal areas in order to repel any potential landings. This deception was aided by the fact that the allies would have to fight their way through the hedgerows of Normandy, which did slow them down quite a bit initially, before breaking out into the open terrain leading to Paris, so in all respects Calais would have been a better place to land, except the same utility in breaking out for it would also have been afforded to the Germans in terms of responding to an invasion from Calais.

So in order to describe this plan as “war planning by sixth graders” it must be established, both that the plan was not leaked intentionally (which would be rather difficult) and that the plan itself was technically incompetent, which would require a qualified opinion by trained military officers. We do have some veterans of officer grade on ChristianForums, are you among that number? Or perhaps you worked at the Pentagon or the DIA as an intelligence analyst who studies such plans on a professional level?

There are legitimate mistakes made by any administration, but as I see it the criticism here on this particular issue is misguided.

Even assuming that the leak was an intentional deception tactic (without any argument for or against such an idea), it was a total failure since the information didn't move past the Atlantic reporter. You don't leak such information by just adding a random media person to a chat and hoping he will shout everything you write from the rooftop. I am sure that there are channels and moles through which such targeted information can flow (if they haven't been axed by DOGE).

 

[iluvatar5150]

This is the icing on the cake:

Tulsi Gabbard - Director of National Intelligence - 14 March 2025:

"Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such."

Cribbed from Reddit (paraphrased): "If Tulsi was on the thread, OPSEC was already compromised."

 

[That Guy 11200]

This raises the obvious question of, who else has been given access to these secret chats in the past and who else will be given access in the future.

 

[The Liturgist]

You don't leak such information by just adding a random media person to a chat and hoping he will shout everything you write from the rooftop.

Why not? If you plaster it all over CNN, an intelligent adversary will suspect disinformation. The more you make the disclosure look like an accident, such as in Operation Mincemeat, the more likely it is the enemy will buy it.

 

[Nithavela]

Why not? If you plaster it all over CNN, an intelligent adversary will suspect disinformation. The more you make the disclosure look like an accident, such as in Operation Mincemeat, the more likely it is the enemy will buy it.

When you leak your information in the way described in this thread, there are (in my opinion) two possibilities:

Either the reporter keeps mum about it until after the fact, like in this case. If that happens, why bother?
Or the reporter startes spreading the news, and then you'll have the "plastered all over CNN" scenario you just described as being ineffective.

Again, even going by your standards, this wasn't well done.

 

[Larniavc]

Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s secretary of defense, inadvertently included the top editor of The Atlantic in a Signal text chat group revealing the U.S.’s attack plans on Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month, according to the magazine.​

​

The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported in a nearly 3,500-word story published Monday that the most senior national-security leaders of the United States included him in a group chat on Signal about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. “I didn’t think it could be real,” he wrote. “Then the bombs started falling.” HERE​

I will tell you this, from Trump telling Russians top secrets in the White house causing Israel scrambling to remove assets they had from out Russia, to Trump telling a foreign nationalist top nuclear sub top secrets at Mar A Largo, everyone with a clandestine spying program are smiling from ear to ear. Not one that, why are air strike plans being discussed on apps sold to the pubic? This is the utter incompetence warned about come Pete ol boy.

Buttery males!

 

[wing2000]

This raises the obvious question of, who else has been given access to these secret chats in the past and who else will be given access in the future.

No one in the group chat asked who "JG" was....(obviously, there was not even a basic check for who is in the group chat).
For all they know, VP couid have been there....

 

[RocksInMyHead]

the fact that it is device dependent with no MFA means if anyone got a hold of the device it would be easy to open the app and read messages.

That's a good point. Mostly what I was trying to say is that if you were going to share state secrets on a commercial messaging app, Signal is hardly the worst choice from a security standpoint.

 

[iluvatar5150]

No one in the group chat asked who "JG" was....(obviously, there was not even a basic check for who is in the group chat).
For all they know, VP couid have been there....

That's why you restrict internal communications to channels controlled by the organization's it/security. We use a ton of different communication apps and every one of them has controls for this sort of thing. Our loosest set of rules is probably in Outlook, which will still warn you that you're cc'ing somebody outside the org.

 

[Vanellus]

This story deserves to be on the front page of every print and online media outlet in the US. Everyone involved needs to face serious repercussions.

The combination of buffoonery, truculence and amateurishness on display in these texts should be career ending. Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't appear to include 'competence' as one of its hiring requirements.

Senior administration and cabinet officials along with high-level US intelligence officials communicated classified information via an open-source public encryption service about an imminent national security action. Some of them did so on non-secured and non-government issued mobile devices.

They failed to follow basic operational security protocols. There are laws governing this stuff (Espionage Act and National Security Act for a start) and they breached about 20 of them. Not just operational security stuff, but information retention/preservation and accountability laws as well.

They then managed to magnify their mistake by inviting a journalist into the chat and then failing to recognise that they'd done so.

If you're a member of the military or intelligence community, this is the sort of thing that gets you arrested and then locked up in a deep, dark hole and forgotten about.

The Trump admin was chosen for "loyalty" i.e unquestioning yes men and women, not competence.

 

[High Fidelity]

Yeah but her emails tho

 

[Always in His Presence]

Is there any proof of the accusation?