Top of Mind Thursday – March 27, 2025: A Harmless Little Chat

This week, we learned that details of a pending US military operation were shared by senior US officials over Signal, an insecure messaging app—among a long list of people that included a journalist.

The full story is still unfolding on this incident, but it appears at this point to have been a major faux pas.

Not only could this have compromised an in-progress military op, but one of the people included on the message trail was following the conversation while in Russia (where eavesdropping and spying on foreign dignitaries are to be expected). US partners are upset, because their intelligence input may have been compromised. And inadvertently adding a journalist to this type of conversation is a major no-no.

Mistakes happen, and this could have all blown over quickly had the administration admitted they made a mistake and it would take steps to ensure it didn’t happen again.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the key players involved (including the Secretary of Defense) tried to deflect blame:

No classified information was disclosed (texts show that was not the case).

The journalist must have added himself to the group (not possible), or he made this up (not the case, based on what was disclosed).

And even, from Donald Trump: The app itself must be defective (Nope, the app worked exactly as it was supposed to).

This administration is turning the US government upside down and inside out in an attempt to root out fraud and eliminate wasteful spending. They’ve purposely brought in people with little to no government experience to change things up.

That’s fine and good, but there are processes and procedures in place for a reason. Just like you don’t fire the people who guard the nuclear stockpile or manage air traffic control, you don’t ignore national security protocols put in place for all of our safety.

Perhaps it’s time for the president to call his team in for a chat about how to manage critical information in the future. But this time, don’t have that discussion over an insecure messaging platform.

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