The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
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This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.
It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.
What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how "tough" the response was.
It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.
This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.
I’m furious. And if you're not, you should be too.
Haha you guys will forget this by next week. Nothing is going to happen.
Could you imagine if this was the other way around? Then heads will roll. Democrats will whine and then move on in less than a week.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
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They're going to try and ruin this journalist for embarrassing them, that's what will happen.
You think now that they sent him classified information that his phone and any devices he ever touched are now confiscated?
Good thing he's not like a journalist with sources. Total accident too. Mistakes happen
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This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.
It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.
What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how "tough" the response was.
It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.
This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.
I’m furious. And if you're not, you should be too.
Putting it on personal mobile devices allows it 1) to be more easily exfiltrared to their foreign affiliates, and 2) allows them to get around FOIA. I'm sure most of their actions are being carried out in a similar manner.
Even if we ever do wrest power from them, we will have to go along without ever knowing everything they have broken.
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Is it weird that the most shocking thing to me in all of this is that they all act like facebook boomers even in "private" operational meetings? "I will say a prayer for victory," coming out of fucking vance's fingers (and then prayer emojis from everyone else) is just fucking insanity. Like, I expected that behind closed doors they all call it nonsense and act like 4chan dipshits.
The mass leaking of operational information is totally to be expected. Just look at russians and Telegram.
Isn't this to avoid FOIA
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Isn't this to avoid FOIA
Unlikely.
There are plenty of ways that statements and planning related to military operations and diplomacy can be indefinitely immune to FOIA. And anything sensitive (of which this definitely was) will be automagically immune for a duration depending on the kind of discussion it was.
Nah. This is just sheer and utter laziness. They didn't want to have to meet in person, go to a few VTC rooms to have a conf call, or sit at their fancy computers to send emails over a secure line. They just wanted to text on their phones while doing whatever else (dime to a dollar: at least one of them was in public).
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This is so fucked up in OPSEC terms, but reading everyday news and I'm totally not surprised. If an adversary intercept such messaging before operation you can get a new batch of "losers" arriving home in bodybags.
For anyone who missed the "losers" reference
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/09/03/report-trump-disparaged-us-war-dead-as-losers-suckers/ -
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
This stupid story has r/conservative actively chiding the trump administration. Lol
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This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.
It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.
What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how "tough" the response was.
It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.
This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.
I’m furious. And if you're not, you should be too.
Man--you use a LOT of long hyphens--How do you even do that?--The long dash--I can't find it anywhere--Do you have a special keyboard?--
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Ah. I see that the Trump administration has managed to pull the same thing as the Bolsonaro administration did.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
In normal times heads would roll. This is the "buttery males" from Clinton except involving actual classified information.
What would have happened in normal times? Congressional and senate hearings. Cabinet level officials being grilled, and being fired.
And that pales in comparison to what would have happened if the offender hadn't been a cabinet-level official. If a junior officer had discussed something classified and accidentally sent it to a journalist, they probably would have been thrown in prison.
What's just pathetic is that the best you can hope for in this scenario is that for a short while, these people actually do start using secure government communications and SCIFs just to avoid additional embarrassment.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
No mention of if they checked the list of everyone else in the group to see if there was anyone else added that probably shouldn't be there. That would have been a good idea.
"I wonder who this V.Putin account is?"
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I don't think even they remember why they said that
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Side note, "Signal" was the name of the Wehrmacht's propaganda magazine published by Germany during WW2.
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Doesn’t the timing of the strike prove it?
And it’s also been semi acknowledged officially.
Not sure what more you want.
Evidence is not proof.
Making a claim is neither. Show me.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
This is one of those things where if the left had the capacity to practice messaging discipline and media coordination they could repeat everyday for the next two months with brutal consequences for the right-wing administration.
But this will be forgotten about by tomorrow
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Putting it on personal mobile devices allows it 1) to be more easily exfiltrared to their foreign affiliates, and 2) allows them to get around FOIA. I'm sure most of their actions are being carried out in a similar manner.
Even if we ever do wrest power from them, we will have to go along without ever knowing everything they have broken.
Which is why the entire system needs to be ripped out root and all.
That being said, it's a risky gambit and doomed to failure and disaster if nothing is ready to pick up right afterwards.
So get planning everyone. We need a new system. We need details about who is doing what, why and how.
As far removed from capitalism as is possible/reasonable would be great.
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This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.
It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.
What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how "tough" the response was.
It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.
This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.
I’m furious. And if you're not, you should be too.
It’s “indicators” like this that tell me, with all the implications of it, the USA is(!) over.
It scares the bejeezus out if me.
For the country; for the globe.
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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Failing through life with great success.
