The News
US President Donald Trump defended National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who apparently added a journalist to a Signal group chat where top White House officials discussed sensitive military plans.
Waltz “has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC News, instead blaming a staffer for including The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the chat on the encrypted messaging app and downplaying the leak.
Goldberg revealed Monday that he was privy to classified discussions between the officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about a planned US strike on Houthi forces in Yemen, days before the operation took place earlier this month.
Also in the Signal conversation, Vance railed against Europe’s “free-loading,” highlighting the widening transatlantic schism.
SIGNALS
National security experts stunned at breach, as Republicans largely silent
National security staffers were left rattled by the breach, and Democratic lawmakers demanded investigations: One senator called it “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.” Security experts questioned the use of a commercial messaging app to discuss highly sensitive and potentially classified details, which are usually reserved for secure government networks or in-person conversations inside secure facilities. The leak could have “legal implications and make allies wary of sharing intelligence” with the US, Foreign Policy wrote. However, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that those involved should not be disciplined; only a few Republican lawmakers have criticized the breach, with one saying such incidents “can get our troops killed.”
Trump administration’s use of Signal brings national security and transparency risks
America’s “biggest cyber threat” is not Chinese and Russian spies, but “high-ranking officials and government employees who accidentally leak or access classified information,” Axios argued. Signal, an encrypted messaging app that nevertheless has the potential to be hacked, has been widely embraced by government workers since Donald Trump’s reelection, including staffers at the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, The Washington Post reported, “as a tactic to shield communications.” Aside from the national security risks, federal workers’ use of such “surveillance-dodging tactics of spies” also presents a blow to efforts to document real-time history and public transparency in governance, one expert told The Post.
Chat leak reveals depth of Vance’s anti-Europe sentiment
In the Signal group chat, Vice President JD Vance railed against Europe’s “free-loading,” laying bare the extent of the Trump administration’s “disdain for European allies,” Bloomberg wrote. Sweden’s former prime minister said Vance’s texts underscored his “deep anti-European resentment,” and Politico noted that one of the officials’ main preoccupations in the chat were “how to make Europe pay for it.” The messages point to a growing transatlantic schism: European powers are “rethinking their dependence on American weapons systems,” The Washington Post noted, while calls are growing to strengthen Europe’s nuclear deterrent, according to The Wall Street Journal.