Summary
The Atlantic has published unredacted attack plans (non-paywall link) shared in a Signal group chat of senior Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg released the full texts after officials denied sharing war plans or classified information, arguing transparency was necessary amid accusations of dishonesty.
The leaked messages detailed U.S. military strikes targeting Houthis in Yemen.
This is becoming a theme stretching back multiple administrations. The people at the top either don’t understand IT acceptable use policies, cybersecurity controls, classification divisions of systems, records retention policies, etc; or they are intentionally ignoring them. And for bonus points, everyone at this level is an espionage target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group_chat_leak
They’re ignoring them. Acceptable use policies are annoying and they’re too powerful to follow the rules.
It’s quantifiable and expected threat by a known entity, versus nebulous threat by a unknown entity.
The records will be scrutinized. The FoIA requests will happen. The hack of their private infrastructure might not ever happen, and even if does, the foreign actors are not necessarily going to leak the records back to the US constituents: the real perceived threat.
They’ll gladly risk operational security for less paper trail. Every. Fucking. Time.