Signal leak sparks new calls for modernized messaging options from defense officials

Officials are calling for accountability, clearer policies, and more access to modern platforms that military and government insiders can trust for real-time communications about classified activities, after some of the Trump administration’s top national security leaders shared high-stakes military operational plans in a group chat with an American reporter.

In interviews this week, DefenseScoop spoke to current and former defense officials — many who requested anonymity to speak freely — about the incident revealed by the Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was included in a message chain earlier this month on the encrypted but unclassified messaging app Signal, where some of the president’s closest advisers discussed forthcoming strikes targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.

“This, of course, is a political hot potato — because both sides are going after each other. But I want to move beyond the politics and say, let’s acknowledge the gravity of this,” a former senior defense official said in reference to the implications of classified plans being shared on Signal.

Mixed Signals

Congressional hearings and follow-up statements from the government continue to paint a picture of exactly what happened regarding the “Houthi PC Small Group” chat, as it was named. The conversation Goldberg was added to with more than a dozen top Trump officials included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and national security adviser Michael Waltz. 

In the view of the former senior defense official, who requested anonymity to speak openly about the matter, this blunder is “a sign of people [who lack] serious experience at those levels.”

“Because I just cannot think of the people that I used to work with ever doing something like this. I just can’t — whether it’s in the intel community or in the [Defense Department] — a lot of us took this as seriously as anything we ever dealt with as operational security, because people will die if you get it wrong,” the official said Tuesday.

While it’s difficult to get mobile devices with adequate security to transmit classified material, the former senior official said they did have access to “clunky” capabilities designed for exactly that during their own military service.

“And anybody who’s been around the intel community knows that when senior people travel, they have access to all sorts of communication devices,” they noted. 

“So, there is always a temptation to do the quick solution — but the quick solution is not the right solution. You’re violating all sorts of acts and policies and legislation about releasing classified information via unclassified devices or an application that” is not government-approved for sharing sensitive information that could put people or assets at risk, the former senior defense official said.

Regarding exceptions to existing rules, the official said the only scenario they could come up with would be an emergency situation where information had to get out quickly because troops’ lives were on the line.

“But even there, those who know what they’re doing would mask the information by code words or just saying the target is struck, and it would be clear to those who were considered in the ‘need-to-know’ what happened — without revealing anything sensitive,” the former senior defense official said. 

Multiple times in the interview, the official emphasized how shocked and frustrated they were about the administration’s choices during and amid the aftermath of the incident.

A current military official expressed similar sentiments in a separate conversation with DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

“We have classified systems that can do this. We have [a version of the Microsoft Teams chat platform for DOD’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet]. This is just laziness,” the military official said.

However, in an interview Tuesday, another current defense official said they think the U.S. government needs a broader arsenal of options for platforms that go farther than simple encryption and can be trusted for rapid text exchanges that incorporate sensitive and classified information.

“It is nearly impossible for U.S. government agencies all over the world to chat in real time with current U.S. government-provided systems,” said the defense official.

They added that they were not surprised by what happened, because so many federal agencies and officials — as well as lawmakers, journalists and diplomats — use Signal daily to transmit what they refer to as “official communications” about work. 

“There is no efficient way for agencies to chat in real time. For example: Most of your embassies use WhatsApp for communication with DOD, due to the need to be in real-time communication. Most of your staffs across the U.S. government use WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, etc. — and they have for decades,” the defense official said.

Pointing to a potential solution to this challenge, they said that the government needs its own “cross-agency chat or text system that is owned by one agency, but mandated for all.” The system they envision would have classified and unclassified versions, and would be something internal and secure, requiring an official government email to gain access.

The defense official further suggested the government could partner with existing industry platforms — like Signal — because, in their experience, websites and apps created by the U.S. government in the past have “not been good at all.”

Separately, the former senior defense official said that they “completely agree” that it would be helpful for American officials to have approved access to more dynamic tools that meet the expectations of the modern “chat-driven world.”

“We’ve welcomed the help from technology companies, but there’s a different vetting process between classified systems, and Signal and WhatsApp — as good as their encryption are — they’re still not what I would call meant for classified information,” they said. “And I think we’re in a world today where we’re always working with partners and allies, and it can be very cumbersome to get them the information they need. And so you’ll turn to whatever you have.” 

‘There will be no secrets.’

Details about all that was discussed in the administration officials’ “Houthi PC Small Group” chat continue to emerge Wednesday. But since Goldberg’s first story was published Monday, questions and concerns have swirled about the legality and possible unforeseen consequences of the high-level officials’ use of the unclassified messaging app.

“There’s going to be great hay made of the fact that this particular group of individuals with security clearances transmitted top-secret information on a commercial, encrypted software. That’s just the reality of politics. Underscoring that is that we need to have government-secured communications, well-encrypted with strong algorithms, that are going to be used for the transmission of federally protected information amongst agencies — and that is an absolute requirement,” Scott White told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

White served as an officer with the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command and is currently an associate professor and director of George Washington University’s cybersecurity program. He and the other officials who DefenseScoop interviewed highlighted how the issue that underpins this entire incident has been a problem for previous administrations and across political parties.

“President Obama loved to use his Blackberry — and that’s got probably some of the best encryption in the world,” White said. 

“In fact, the Saudi government told BlackBerry that they wouldn’t allow them to sell their product in Saudi Arabia unless they gave them the de-encryption codes, and Blackberry said, ‘We’re not giving them to you,’” he explained. “It has one of the strongest encryptions in the world — and even that encryption program, when Obama wanted to use his own Blackberry, they disallowed that.”

President Donald Trump and members of his administration have largely downplayed any critiques of wrongdoing associated with the controversial Signal chat.

When asked if his team’s decision to use the app put U.S. national security at risk during a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Trump responded: “I don’t know anything about Signal. I wasn’t involved in this, but I just heard about it, and I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot [in] the military, and I think, successfully — but sometimes somebody can get onto those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.” 

In response to reporters’ questions about whether he’ll move to mandate an investigation into the matter, the president said, “It’s not really an FBI thing,” so he would instead like to know more about the platform’s security.

“Like, will somebody be able to break in? Are people able to break into conversations? And if that’s true, we’re going to have to find some other form of device, and I think that’s something that we may have to do. Some people like Signal very much, other people probably don’t, but we’ll look into it,” Trump said.

At a press gaggle with reporters in Hawaii on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Hegseth doubled down on his rebuttal that “nobody’s texting war plans.” 

Prior to his statements, the Atlantic published screenshots of his texts in the Signal group, where the secretary revealed U.S. Central Command’s schedule for attacks, as well as information about specific targets and locations.

“If you define ‘war plan’ as an ‘O-plan,’ an operational plan, it was definitely not a war plan. It was, however — if I believe Goldberg from the Atlantic and I have every reason to believe them — it included targets, timing, weapons platforms, which are classified. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. There’s no parsing this one out. That information will put lives at stake if somebody has access to it,” the former senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

They noted that there are people who served in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 15 years “who were petrified about polygraphs because they had to do something in the heat of battle — to release information to an ally or a partner, but had no choice — because people were going to die if they didn’t do something.”   

“To think that people at the most senior levels in the government would not acknowledge what they did was wrong. That’s what really is beginning to bug me more than anything else, is this refusal to acknowledge what was done was wrong,” the official said. “It almost feels like it’s another blatant disregard for the rules that everybody else has to follow. I would be led off in handcuffs if I had done what they did, there would be no doubt in my mind — I would be held accountable for sucking up that magnitude of having a reporter in on the classified chat.”

Further, they called the fact that Steve Witkoff — the American real estate investor, lawyer, and Trump’s pick to serve as the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East  — was in Russia for meetings with President Vladimir Putin while participating in the group text “absolutely stunning.”

“I would assume everything from the chat has been compromised, because it’s Russia and they’re really good at this stuff. So if you’re not paying attention to that, what else has been compromised?” the former senior defense official said.

Hegseth and other members of Trump’s cabinet have also said that the success of the attacks in Yemen discussed in the chat show that the group message was not compromised. 

However, the officials who spoke to DefenseScoop this week pointed out that it’s possible U.S. adversaries could have been hiding in those types of text chains over long periods to learn about the tactics, techniques and procedures that will better position them next time to counter future operations.

“And most people don’t write about this aspect of it, but they can also learn from it and use information operations right back at the president, which they know how to target him very personally and convince him to do things or not do things. So there’s a lot in play here, which is well beyond just this one initial strike,” the former senior defense official said.

White said there’s an onus on government officials, now more than ever, to continue to handle sensitive, classified and top-secret information and distribute that information as securely as possible — because China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are constantly working to intercept U.S. communications for their benefit.

He and other cyber experts also expect major disruptions in the potentially not-so-distant future when quantum computing is fully realized and can be used with AI to break existing encryption services, including those that enable text messages to seemingly disappear after they are sent. 

“There will be no secrets. So in the same vein, we’re going to have to use artificial intelligence and quantum computing to create a robust encryption,” White said.

The officials who DefenseScoop interviewed additionally called on the government to use this incident as an opportunity to spotlight one concise policy about what is and isn’t permissible when using unclassified mobile apps for work-related chats. 

According to an official DOD memorandum published in 2023, “unmanaged messaging apps” including iMessage, Signal and WhatsApp are “NOT authorized to access, transmit, process non-public DoD information.”

“To me, it probably is clear already — but why not take advantage of this to come out with a policy that says, ‘here’s guidance,’” the former senior defense official said.

“We can’t afford to do this when we’re going against the Chinese adversary in the South China Sea — so we’ve got to learn from this,” they said. “We have to put some things in place to make sure something like this never happens again.”