March 28: “Signalgate” signals a bigger problem than what’s being reported
In which, the Trump administration’s transparency boasts collide with cybersecurity threats, national security prerogatives, and human stupidity.
“Signalgate” signals a bigger problem than what’s being reported
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz (far right) with President Trump, VP Vance, Sec Def Hegseth, and the NATO delegation led by Secretary General Rutte. March 13, 2025. Public Domain.
There are A LOT of strands to follow on this so-called scandal the press has dubbed “Signalgate.” I’ll give the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), then unpack the broader context of what clearly has been dubbed by the DC press the scandal du jour.
BLUF: Adding the anti-Trump editor (Jefferey Goldberg) of a leading anti-Trump publication (The Atlantic) to a group chat discussing airstrikes in Yemen was an incredibly foolish move by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz from both a political and national security perspective, but it’s not the scandal the press is saying it is.
There is another scandal though…
Before we get there, it’s imperative that we’ve got the facts straight and understand the context in which this particular tempest in a teapot is occurring.
The pertinent facts are as follows:
On Monday of this week, editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, published claims that he had received classified “war plans” from the Trump administration on airstrikes in Yemen that had occurred ten days earlier.
The Trump administration initially denied the claims, prompting Goldberg to publish the whole conversation with minor redactions.
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz then accepted responsibility for having set the group up in Signal, a popular messaging app with end to end encryption, and including/inviting/adding Goldberg to the chat.
The Trump administration has contested Goldberg’s claims that classified information was shared in the group, and that any “war plans” were shared.
Of particular concern are
1) Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s messages outlining attack times, and type of aircraft and munitions used; and
2) the possibility the CIA sources may have been compromised by Nat Sec Advisor Waltz confirming a strike on a particular building sheltering a Houthi bombmaker.
Soooooo many questions.
Why would Waltz add a known Trump opponent to such a chat?
Why is the administration using Signal, a publicly available app?
Are they using Signal on government issued phones or personal phones?
What is the difference between “war plans” and “attack plans”?
Was the information being shared truly classified?
Some of these questions have shorter answers than others, but I’ll give it my best shot.
According to comments by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, no classified information was shared in the chat and no sources were compromised.
In the same Congressional hearing, Gabbard pointed out that the use of Signal had been cleared for use in the federal government by the Biden administration (plot twist!) as an alternate secure communication option after a Chinese cyberattack breached the secured communications networks typically used for these kinds of discussions (bigger plot twist!).
For his part, Waltz claims, and Gabbard concurred, that Signal was already loaded onto his government issued phone when it was issued to him.
The pertinent operational details that Hegseth is in hot water for sharing probably would’ve violated operational security protocols had they been made publicly available prior to or during the mission. Thankfully, Goldberg appears to have had the good sense to sit on those details until well after the operation was completed (over a week).
That brings us to the main question: What was Goldberg doing there in the first place? At the end of the day, had Goldberg not been in the group, this end to end encrypted group text between President Trump and his foreign policy team would’ve just been another day in the office: a perfectly legitimate use of a messaging app that had been cleared by the prior administration to conduct a military action that was highly successful. So, without Goldberg in the chat, this isn’t just another day at the office, this is a really good day at the office for the Trump administration.
But, Goldberg was in the chat, and Waltz had put him there.
Why?
Did Waltz put Goldberg in the wrong chat, given that this was a chat only for this particular mission (implying other such subchats exist) and Goldberg, recognizing the opportunity to stick it to Trump, not say anything? Did someone else have access to Waltz’s Signal app and add Goldberg? Did Waltz add Goldberg to purposefully entrap Hegseth?
I’ve seen and/or heard reporting that suggests all of these possibilities. Bottom line: We don’t really know.
What is clear is that Waltz added Goldberg and Goldberg is attempting to make Waltz and the Trump administration pay for it.
My thought bubble? I wonder if Waltz was merely following the example of the entire Trump administration on transparency. Indeed, “most transparent administration ever,” is an oft repeated line by the Trump administration. Whether it was on the campaign trail, in the Oval Office signing executive orders, Elon Musk and DOGE’s X accounts, or that infamous moment with Zelensky in the Oval Office, the Trump administration has been intentionally pulling the curtain back on its operations with gusto.
Problem is, transparency is not an end in itself and some things, military operations especially, should be kept a little more tightly under wraps. Not only that, we have a raft of laws and regulatory procedures around information and operations security that are certainly not always followed by high level leaders (remember Hillary Clinton’s very unsecured email server?), but still play a critical role in making life difficult for adversarial intelligence services and protecting American lives. The weak link in the chain of information security, everywhere and for all time, is almost always going to be the human one, and we got a really good example of that here.
So, that bigger scandal I hinted at:
The bigger scandal here is not Michael Waltz's stupidity or Goldberg’s duplicity. That’s just a normal day in the life of humanity.
The bigger scandal is that America’s institutions of national security, despite efforts to secure communications, suffers from the twin problems of aggressor nations penetrating the networks and an acknowledged over-classification problem. The two problems interact to significantly slow down communication within an administration and prevent decisionmakers from effectively coordinating messaging and strategy when not physically in one another’s presence. The scandal is that though we may have robust information security protocols on paper, they may not be robust enough in practice, and may even be undercutting effective communication, planning, and execution of policy.
For what it’s worth, I think Waltz should at least offer to resign. It would be a dutiful and likely safe gesture. As National Security Advisor, he’s tasked with coordinating national security policy and effective, secure communication is a critical component of that job. This was a huge, unforced error, luckily one that didn’t fatally undermine a mission.
So where do we go from here?
Despite the deeper context of the chat under question not jeopardizing a military mission; the use of Signal being a Biden administration response to (successful) Chinese cyberattacks; and the apparent core value of transparency by the Trump administration, Democrats on the Hill are running with this as the newest line of attack on the Trump administration (despite the fact that some Dems really like Waltz’s use of emojis and Signal too, apparently).
With a wave of lawsuits and injunctions being aimed at the Trump administration’s agenda through the courts, “Signalgate” indicates a second line of attack opening up through the bureaucracy and the media. This looks a lot like the playbook Democrats ran against Trump in his first term, but this might prove a weaker version of the strategy as the Trump administration is aggressively making moves to staff mid-level bureaucratic jobs, reduce the current federal workforce, and seek to protect its Congressional majorities.
At the end of the day, I would say “Signalgate” is a DC newscycle scandal more than anything. While it has absolutely dominated my American news feeds, it hasn’t registered that much abroad, nor does it really seem to be getting traction in the broader American public. At least not yet. We’ll see where we stand at the 100-day mark of the Trump administration, which will be April 30.
I’m honestly still trying to sort through all the claims and counter claims, so if you’ve still got questions on this matter, post them below in a comment, and I’ll incorporate them into follow notes and newsletters!
Baby steps to ceasefire in Ukraine
Earlier this week, after withdrawing from Kursk, Ukraine mounted what appears to be another incursion into Russia around Belgorod, while Russia continues to target civilian infrastructure.
How are these attacks factoring into ceasefire diplomacy?
Maintaining these kinds of attacks prior to signing any ceasefire agreement allows both nations some room for negotiation in terms of what they’ll agree to give up. However, it could just easily be an early signal that neither country is still ready to commit to a general ceasefire.
Progress does appear to have been made around sectional ceasefires. This looks like adopting a ceasefire in a certain sector of the conflict, the Black Sea in this case. Such a ceasefire, would certainly be a win for Ukraine in getting its Black Sea shipping back up and running, which may be why Russia is looking for some kind of compensation for agreeing to such a narrowly defined agreement.
Civil war wind down in Sudan, civil war build up in South Sudan
Sudan and South Sudan have been beset by civil war and/or the threat of civil war for most of the last 40 years. The 2011 independence of South Sudan from Sudan was thought by many, including me, to be an opportunity to off ramp the brutal sectional fighting in that part of Africa.
For a while, it seemed like Sudan was fairly stable, even as South Sudan struggled to find peace among its warring factions. But then civil war broke out in Sudan in 2022 and it seemed as though South Sudan would be the more stable of the two. That possibility is also quickly evaporating.
This week, even as the Sudanese government forces lifted the siege on Khartoum and captured critical points in the capital, South Sudan hurtled back towards the abyss of civil war. The South Sudanese government arrested the Vice President, a member of the opposition whose position was part of an earlier peace deal warring factions had brokered. With the VP’s arrest, the opposition now claims the peace deal is void, which appears to be clearing the way for more violence in South Sudan.
Back to “normal” in Israel?
As the Israel-Hamas ceasefire ended last week, Israel expanded ground operations and airstrikes in Gaza, but outside the war zone there seems to be an odd “getting back to business” vibe in Israel and the West Bank.
The Knesset passed the controversial judicial reform bill that had caused mass protests just prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. The bill has largely been on the back burner since the war started, but I guess the Netanyahu government thought the immediate danger with Hamas had passed and was willing to give the bill another go. The resulting passage of the bill brought protesters back into the streets as well.
In Palestinian politics, as the fighting picks back up in Gaza, the common front the Palestinian Authority and Hamas seemed to form in opposition to Israel appears to have also reverted back to the means of mutual distrust and playing for political advantage.
That’s what the surface looks like, however, Just under the surface, though, there are indications that things are still not back to normal, and that may actually spell bad news for Hamas where rare anti-Hamas protests broke out in the Strip. Typically, such protests are put down brutally, if they ever get started. The fact that these not only started, but garnered some attention indicates that Hamas doesn’t quite have the internal control in the Strip that it has been known to have.
Circle backs
As the new Syrian government takes shape, it looks pretty apparent that we’re not exactly getting a more Western, or Israel-friendly government.
Kenya’s anti-gang police force in Haiti is continuing to take losses.
Iran has responded to Trump’s letter demanding new nuclear talks with a response appearing to agree on the need for talks, though it’s unclear what preconditions may have been demanded at this point.
Turkey continued to crackdown on anti government protesters and journalists this week after the arrest of President Erdogan’s chief rival.
Field notes
Thailand and Myanmar were rocked this morning by a massive earthquake that caused extensive damage.
Four US soldiers have been reported as “missing” during a NATO exercise on the border of Lithuania and Belarus.
China expanded its Middle East footprint by signing a deal with Egypt to build factories near the Suez Canal. Get kicked out of Panama and pivot to Egypt, I guess.