And lest we forget, just last week, Hegseth and other senior officials had a classified briefing on how the US would fight a war with China.
Do the Chinese already have that info?
If this is as convoluted and ambiguous as implementing CMMI was on software and engineering processes, it is going to be a nightmare.
If Tulsi Gabbard has it, assume that everyone has it. Especially our enemies. It’s like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, except made by the Farrell Brothers in which everyone knows who ‘Gerold the Mole’ is and nobody cares because they are to busy trading crypto.
Stranger
Translation: Punch America until it all burns.
Translation: Pray for the strength of America, because we so sorely need prayers right now.
It has been confusing so far. But it looks like we will be CMMC level 2 which is not much more than the 800-171 we are already doing and only requires a self-assessment as we’ve already been doing. Level 3 has additional controls and requires certification. At least this is my interpretation.
I haven’t come across this theory elsewhere. It sounds quite plausible.
Mike Waltz admits to mistakenly adding the Atlantic editor to the chat. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, ,but it wasn’t a staffer.
My understanding is that this practice was probably started to bypass some laws.
Government communications like this are required by law to go into permanent records, which are classified but are available in the future. The government communications systems reflect this by automatically making records of all messages.
The Trump administration apparently doesn’t like this policy. I would speculate they are afraid that some of the things they are saying might become evidence in future investigations.
So they use non-government communications systems which don’t keep records. This in itself is illegal but it means there will be no evidence in the future of any other illegal acts which are discussed.
So the use of outside communications systems like Signal is probably routine and the only unusual thing in this incident was the accidental inclusion of Goldberg on the list, which made the use of Signal public knowledge.
Putting detailed information out there is bad enough, but I think the Administration should be embarrassed by the revelation that while a military operation was unfolding, the Vice President of the United States is still whining the operation should be put off for a month so the Administration should get its messaging straight.
Vance may have been right, but at that point, did he really expect the team to say, “Gosh, Mr. Vice President, you’re right! We’ll pull the plug on this right now.”?
Waltz is a proven liar. Maybe he lied about this. The words alone of liars like him really tell us nothing about what actually happened.
I think we’re far past just prayers. We need a direct intervention above the merely godly level. Something more like:
And then they include a journalist on their secret squirrel network. It’s like The Three Stooges of government conspiracies.
I just love that it was Stephen Miller who set him straight on interpreting the President’s desires. I guess we know who wears the pants in this administration; the cosplay Nazi henchman straight from Central Casting:
“Seriously?…They look like bad guys!” — Scott Lang, a.k.a. “the Ant-[beat]-Man”
Stranger
I miss the Nixon days, when we had competent criminals in the White House.
They weren’t that competent. The Plumbers got caught breaking into the DNC headquarters because they were shitty burglers, and then Nixon apparently forgot that he shouldn’t talk about cover-ups in the Oval Office where there were recording devices he had installed. Drug dealers are smarter than this.
Stranger
As a Canadian I’m now morbidly curious what emojis will be used to signal attacks on Canada. Does the US military have a handbook on emoji protocol?
As someone who is emoji-illiterate, is that what it says? Translation, please?
I read that there’s a Democratic Representative is holding up a sign with the emojis to mock Republicans, saying ‘When we agree on something, I’ll hold up this sign instead of making a speech.’
This emoji thing is a trapeze act to me. It’s over my head.
It looks like Waltz is taking the fall for this one, perhaps thinking that Trump will cover his ass no matter what…or perhaps thinking that Trump is a hill worth dying on.
I read something in which Mike Waltz claimed not to have had Jeffrey Goldberg in his contacts list, so how was he accidentally added?
Maybe there are an infinite number of monkeys typing contact info for the DoD.
Their first mistake was labeling the plans “Special Order 191”.
Yes. Things like bribery and other criminal behavior. Seriously. The US has a lot of anti-corruption regulations which are as annoying as any security protocol but keep us less corrupt than most middle income countries up to now. Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/signalgate-is-bad-but-opsec-isnt-even-the-worst-part-of-it
Note that no one in the chat is saying, “Hey, we sure it’s cool to be talking about this on Signal?” Or, “Should we be worried this is an insecure channel?” That and the simple logic of the matter tells us this is commonplace in the new administration.
… Think this is hyperbole? Remember that when Trump held his notorious meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2019 he confiscated his translator’s notes and ordered him not to divulge anything that had been discussed. Remember that Trump got impeached over an extortion plot recorded in the government record of his phone call with President Zelensky. An intelligence analyst discovered what had happened and decided he needed to report the conduct. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’ve already happened. And he’s even been caught. Which is probably one reason there’s so much use of Signal.
This is clearly routine in the Trump administration. How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself.
These are impeachable offenses and Secretary of Defense Hegseth should resign.