I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
I wrote a piece to contextualize this story in the context of the types of discussions that take place on privacy-focused tech forums:
TL;DR: This was a human error. Signal (nor any other E2EE app for that matter) could not have prevented this, because E2EE smartphone apps are simply not the right tool for the job of enabling government officials to securely conduct military operations.
Waltz has also denied knowing Goldberg despite a 2021 picture of the two men standing next to each other at an event. Goldberg told The Guardian, “I’m not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz beyond saying I do know him and have spoken to him.”
Other recent reports said that Waltz and a senior aide used personal Gmail accounts for government communications, and that “Waltz has created and hosted multiple other sensitive national-security conversations on Signal with cabinet members.”
Waltz has kept his job. The Guardian wrote that Trump was “mollified by the findings of the internal investigation,” and did not want the media “to have the satisfaction of forcing the ouster of a top cabinet official weeks into his second term.”
Now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been implicated in another Signal-related scandal. This time, he allegedly sent war plans in a group chat including his wife and brother.
I won’t share additional contextualization since this is an similar political scandal to the Atlantic article. But since new information was revealed, I thought it would be nice to share
