Small earthquake in the US chain chain: among the recipients of communications reserved also the editor -in -chief of a newspaper. Fortunately allied.
If you were high officers of the Armed Forces when leaving an attack on enemy stations, you would probably check the recipients of the letter. Well, it seems instead that it was not. The high officials of national security, who coordinated the air attacks against the Houthi objectives in Yemen at the beginning of this month, used a Unprotected communication channelwhich accidentally included the editor of the header The Atlantic. Certainly an ally, but the procedure followed seems to have violated federal protocols and the law.
In an article published on Monday, the chief editor in question, Jeffrey Goldbergclaimed to have been added to a group on Signalan open source messaging app focused on privacy, by someone who identified himself as Michael WaltzCouncilor for National Security of the President Donald Trump. According to Goldberg, the conversation includes messages from Pete Hegseth (Defense Secretary), JD Vance (vice president) e Marco Rubio (Secretary of State), among others. The messages contained Operational details on imminent attacks in Yemenincluding information on objectives, weapons that the United States would have deployed and the sequence of operations conducted by the US Central Command. In addition, it emerged that the campaign could last weeks. But above all, thanks to this inattention, the press has learned some air attacks More than two hours earlier that they were made public by government officials.
For its part, Goldberg wrote: “The information contained in them, if they had been read by a United States opponent, could have plausibly be used to damage American military and intelligence personnel, in particular in the wider Middle East, area of responsibility for the central command”. The story therefore saw the officials of the Department of Defense contact the Council for National Security, which through the declarations of the spokesperson Brian Hughes He said that the reported series of messages seems authentic and that searches are underway to establish who and how he may have involuntarily added a number to the list. However, the official also stressed: “These messages are also a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful political coordination in place between high officials. The continuous success of the operation against the Houthi shows that there have been no threats for our members of the service or for our national security”.
But regardless of the fact that Goldberg was accidentally added or voluntarily to the recipients, what happened shows that certain officials could have violated the rules relating to the sharing of safe military information. Furthermore, in the messages the concerns were underlined regarding the Trump’s strategy in the Middle East and complained about the lack of action of the European allies in the region governed by the rebels supported by Iran.
It is not the first time that a social or radio communication channel is exploited improperly, revealing confidential information: it happened in 2023 during Russian military operations in Ukrainian and, previously, even during the Falklands war in 1982, when a series of English messages were accidentally transmitted in clear and intercepted by the Argentines. Perhaps the famous manifesto “Taci, the enemy listens to you” should be updated with “Attention to who you are chatting”.
