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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24171 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Just saw this article about the British intelligence community in response to the Signal leaks https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-spies-intelligence-leaks-trump-blunder-3604544

I think that's an interesting way to gauge how serious (or not serious) this is by observing how allied nations in Five Eyes/Israel/Japan/etc react, especially given they've already been concerned about Intel leaking from the Trump admin

For the UK we have

“There is some deep-rooted fear in the rank and file of intelligence community at the moment,” a UK intelligence source said.

Another security official said trusting the US will be a “challenge”, adding: “This will make the UK more nervous about the conversations they are having and how they are being discussed across groups.”

But it's not just anonymous names, there are some former British officials too

John Foreman, the UK’s defence attache to Moscow until 2022, said the leak could have led to a compromise of US sources, but “worse still the compromise of allied sources”.

And from "Nicholas Williams, a former senior official at Nato and the Ministry of Defence"

“There must be doubts among the UK that the Trump administration can protect the intelligence and its UK source.”

It seems even some US intelligence officials are concerned about this, although no names attached..

A US intelligence official said the leak of US war plans over Signal showed that distrust in the administration is justified. “Why would allies trust the US with their critical intelligence?” they said.

New Zealand Government's declined to comment, but we do have this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/trump-signal-leak-reaction-canada-five-eyes.

Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.

Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.

I can't find anything specific for Australia at the high level but this article from an Australian "Military Operations Expert" says it's concerning and gives their reasoning for it https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-us-group-chat-on-houthi-attack-plans-so-concerning-a-military-operations-expert-explains-253029 with one bit I find rather interesting

If high-level conversations do need to happen on an unclassified platform like Signal, the participants would normally use a code word that doesn’t give away what they’re talking about. This keeps a conversation encrypted to a degree until a secure device can be accessed.

But they come to the conclusion that this is definitely concerning and they're going to be having a bunch of back channel discussions but most likely it's not an immediate deal breaker for intelligence sharing.

Mark Carney has talked about it himself a little but he also has incentive to distance from Trump already what with the trade war and comments on making Canada a state.

US war plans leak shows allied nations must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

I haven't seen or found anything about other nations responses yet. I imagine they're probably going to be along the same lines of "This isn't a deal breaker but it is serious and adding more fear when we're already feeling wary"

couple ponints

  1. The intel agencies of 5-eyes are generally believed to be wholly rotten, that is, aligned with the the Blob - the people who fucked it all up and who fought Trump so furiously. Whatever they say needs to be taken with as much salt as whatever Trump says.

  2. Signal is secure enough for serious criminal activity, I've seen no indication it was broken by LE and is not believed to be broken in any other way than through, possibly, OS level hacks on devices.

While it's obviously not a good thing for natsec group chats to involve unintended participants, I suspect there's a heavy partisanship element to all this. There wasn't such grave concerns being expressed by allies (or even the domestic US media) when a Biden staffer leaked intelligence to Iran, but it's much more politically acceptable to publicly criticize Trump, so there'll be a lot more grandstanding about worries with sharing intelligence etc.

The whole thing is really bizarre. Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?

I don't believe the theories about it being deliberate and some manipulative exercise against friendly and hostile foreign governments. Hegseth purportedly posted operational details which isn't 'no classified information was discussed'. It was specific details about a military operation before it occurred. And then in the Senate Intelligence hearing they glossed over things with the CIA Director saying Signal is an approved app for comms like this.

If the whole thing was some sort of PsyOp, why did Hegseth post those details? Did it never happen and the journalist is complicit? Isn't there an easier way to PsyOp without making the administration look incompetent?

I think its just what it looks like. A big stuff up.

Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?

If you're going to add a random person to a chat, it's going to be a random person in your contacts list. And people in politics talk to journalists a lot. Odds seem pretty high imo!

Yeah, it looks like Waltz's (now deleted) Venmo account was full of journalists including from MSNBC and CNN.

He might not necessarily have been previously leaking info to Goldberg. Maybe Goldberg previously contacted him asking for comment and was saved as a standard phone contact that way. Maybe someone else sent him a dodgy contact card which he saved into his phone. This contact was then imported into Signal and then he accidentally added it to the group chat. He made a comment about contacts 'getting sucked in' in a recent interview.

I think Waltz is basically lying through his teeth right now for damage control, so I don't think we're going to get a straight story from him.

Goldberg claims details about a military operation were disclosed. However the evidence he provided doesn’t to date confirm that. Goldberg also has a history of lying.

That is, it isn’t clear what has it has not been shared.

The evidence he provided doesn’t to date confirm that.

He has now provided evidence.

And it seems like Goldberg overstated what he was given but perhaps Trump’s team understated.

So it looks like the administration straight up lied. I don't know why they would considering Goldberg had the receipts. Are they trying to use some weasel reasoning of what is and is not 'classified'?

Are they trying to use some weasel reasoning of what is and is not 'classified'?

Yes, but it's valid weaseling.

This tweet is doing the rounds that says advanced warning that the US will attack is automatically classified as Top Secret. The only way I can square the weaseling is if I squint and say SecDef has the ability to declassify any DoD classified information, which he presumably did by posting it in the chat.

The CIA director alluded to this argument in his Senate Intelligence answers today.

That's a policy document saying how things SHOULD be classified. It is not binding on the SECDEF himself, as the Original Classification Authority.

Note that Waltz's assessment of European (lack of) capabilities is also covered there, though without any supporting material it's only Confidential. However, he is also an Original Classification Authority.

The whole thing is really bizarre. Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?

The obvious answer is that Waltz was already leaking speaking off the record to JG using Signal prior to this incident.

Glenn Greenwald agrees with you.

I've struggled with this because of Goldberg's hostility to the administration, but nothing else fits unless someone else had access to his phone. He already denied that a staffer of his changed the contact.

Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?

Not low. Vance's phone will be full with high profile beltway people. As will everyone else's. A nice chunk of them are journalists.

Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor added everyone to the group and he used his phone's contacts to do so. He denies having ever met or having the contact on his phone of the journalist in question.

In this interview he says the the contact he had in his phone was for someone else that should have been in the group. But that contact's name was somehow attached to the journalist's number instead. The interviewer asks if it was a rogue staffer who substituted the number, but Waltz denied it. He says there is an investigation underway with attached technical experts trying to determine how the wrong number was assigned to the legitimate persons name in his phone.

It would make sense that a motivated person would try to substitute a hostile journalist's number in this way, but how that happened is still up in the air. Still, some of the blatant smearing of the journalist in question by Waltz in this interview (and Hegseth when interviewed earlier today) in some post-hoc Poisoning the Well makes it more difficult to take everything Waltz is saying at face value.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has been suggested as the intended person. As for how the number got into his phone... I'm going to guess he just fucked up and put in the wrong J.G. from some other list at some point.

Mike Walz

Note: Waltz (Michael) ≠ Walz (Timothy)

Thanks, fixed.

Yeah, this is the most likely explanation. They likely just assumed that “JG” was either another JG or was supposed to be there for another reason and that somebody else was handling opsec / the group chat.

American trade representative Jameison Greer is the name I've seen thrown around for who they might have thought it was. That might still be too charitable - the simplest explanation is that many people just don't really look all that closely at who else is on a group chat. You would kind of hope that some measure of care would be taken when we're talking about sensitive information, but people just get used to what they're doing and don't think about it much.

Maybe they thought it was a lieutenant junior grade lmao

I suspect the Signal leak is an intentional limited hangout to cover up the movement of aircraft for a potential strike on Iran.

I think this version makes sense simply because it just so happens to be a guy from The Atlantic, which is a liberal news source, but not one known for hard news. It’s just doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of newspaper that the Secretary of Defense would have on his phone. They’re mostly culture war journalists, unlike a NYT that pretends to be unbiased hard news.

The Atlantic is very willing to publish cultural conservatives- they have an Atlanticist literati bias, and it so happens that most of those kinds of writers who meet their quality standards are libs, but they carry op Eds from socon intellectuals regularly.

unreal levels of cope from from the 11d canasta crew

More effort than this, please.

If US allies are not worries about their secrets being leaked on warthunder discord, they should probably also sleep tight for some adversary being invited in signal group chat. I doubt that Ayatollah Khomeini is on Walz or Vance shortdial unlike the chief editor of the atlantic. Everyone is pearlclutching because they hate the current admin.

When it comes to fuckups - i would say this is run of the mill one. As a person that has dealt with security and opsec - at some point you just accept that C level people will do stupid stuff and move on. That secrets will be sent in plaintext. That passwords will be written on post it stamps or spell to the secretary in the cafeteria where everyone can overhear.

It's not a nothingburger, but it is a veggieburger. It is humiliating, but not terribly dangerous.

Btw - if some high level Trump admin person is reading this - check threema. The great part about it is that doesn't require any kind of id, and the id themselves are just hex symbols. it is open source and a proper audit of the clients by the USG will be great for everyone.

When it comes to fuckups - i would say this is run of the mill one. As a person that has dealt with security and opsec - at some point you just accept that C level people will do stupid stuff and move on. That secrets will be sent in plaintext. That passwords will be written on post it stamps or spell to the secretary in the cafeteria where everyone can overhear.

I work in cybersecurity and this is my reaction as well. Overall, I'm honestly very impressed that they used Signal. Nature is healing!

It was dumb of them to add a journalist to "Houthi PC small group" chat but shit happens.

Yes yes ideally they would not be discussing this on their extremely difficult to secure smartphones and instead followed official guidance to use MS Teams with whatever dumb compliance features Microsoft added but we all know C level execs aren't going to listen. I don't even blame them.

Imagine how awful the federal government's approved classified information messaging things are.

This is the same reason I didn't hold it against HRC for having her own email server. Imagine how shitty the State Dept's approved mail service would have been in 2009.

(Though that's obviously a lot less secure than Signal)

Yes yes ideally they would not be discussing this on their extremely difficult to secure smartphones and instead followed official guidance to use MS Teams with whatever dumb compliance features Microsoft added but we all know C level execs aren't going to listen.

Willing to bet that the teams solution is less secure than properly updated iphone or android with signal.

Right. From a box checking perspective I'm sure it has all of the security features they want. From a practical perspective I'm sure every foreign intelligence agency knows multiple backdoors for it.

You're right in your statement.

Still, the relevant metric isn't security of proper usage, it's security when used by the bottom decile of expect users.

The approved messaging service is likely much harder to fuck up.

There is some deep-rooted fear in the rank and file of intelligence community at the moment,” a UK intelligence source said.

Another security official said trusting the US will be a “challenge”, adding: “This will make the UK more nervous about the conversations they are having and how they are being discussed across groups.”

Rank and file would not be party to high level security decisions in a leaky environment. And please remember that anonymous sources are always the enemy of humanity.

John Foreman, the UK’s defence attache to Moscow until 2022, said the leak could have led to a compromise of US sources, but “worse still the compromise of allied sources”.

Could. John Foreman is a serious and diplomatic guy, so it's no surprise he didn't say anything of substance, he knows issues in geopolitics are rarely as they appear.

"There must be doubts among the UK that the Trump administration can protect the intelligence and its UK source.”

Must there Nicholas? Actually I agree there must, but I can do that all the way over here in sunny Brisbane, I don't need to be a former NATO Ukraine hawk who protects ALF from the government in my spare time. He looks like the dad from ALF. That might not seem like a robust argument, but I think it's robust enough for "There must be doubts among the UK that the Trump administration can protect the intelligence and its UK source.” Because that means nothing, it's more filler so Richard Holmes and Jane Merrick can reach their word count without relying exclusively on anonymous sources. Instead you get the anonymous sources to say the explosive things, and you get people on record to mention unfortunate potential consequences, and rely on the psychological effect of association to tie them together.

Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.

Andrew Little! He's an actual politician! Oh wait, no he isn't. He was one a few years ago, although not one ever in power. Still, I guess it's informative to know what he imagines might be happening.

Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.

"I'm going to badmouth the leader of the free world" Patman said, displaying his expertise in international relations.

And then a piece from Australia that ends with:

So, at this stage, I don’t think America’s Five Eyes partners should necessarily be concerned about the potential for other intelligence breaches.

So I guess the answer is not serious? But a lot of people really want it to be serious and are hoping they can turn their dreams into memes?

I don't think the Signal Chat Debacle is Fine, Actually, even if it didn't involve classified intel (unless it was on purpose as a 16-dimensional chess move, in which case hilarious) but I am old enough to recall when Germany had an video call about selecting Russian targets for weapons systems (which also mentioned that the UK had troops in-country!) that was recorded and released by the Russians and I don't recall any news stories about how NATO allies were nervous about trusting the Germans with classified intel after. Instead the Germany defense minister announced that said NATO allies weren't annoyed and that he probably wouldn't be firing anyone.

My point isn't to downplay the seriousness of the incident so much as it is to suggest that perhaps other countries are selective about their criticism of intel goof-ups.

ETA: to be clear, it seem quite possible to me that regardless of what Congress was told, classified material was disclosed in the Signal Affair. My point is that even if it wasn't, it's worthy of criticism.

even if it didn't involve classified intel

Honestly it should be pretty embarrassing regardless, but the technicalities probably side with the folks in the administration saying it didn't: classified is a distinction largely imposed by executive orders (excluding some unrelated carve outs) and the power to declare a given fact "secret" or not is a power that has long been delegated to some of the people in the chat.

Maybe it should have been treated more sensitively, but the Secretary of State is empowered to decide "this isn't classified" definitively, and everyone else is supposed to follow along.

Yeah there's not a world where you accidentally invite a journo to a chat and brag about your solid OPSEC and it's not embarrassing...except for the 16D chess situation. Which I uh wouldn't bet on.

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