To my fucking chagrin, I thought The Onion, not The Atlantic, was reporting that editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally invited to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s war-planning group chat, which included: disgraced Secretary of Defense, ex-Fox News Host and “DUI hire” Pete Hegseth; culty Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; Secretary of State “Lil Marco” Rubio (whose undersecretary accused him of fucking cabana boys at foam parties); CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (willfully creating a recession); Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller (racist, famous for asking: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”); beleaguered White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles (doing her best); Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff; and Vice President J.D. Vance (who once called the president he now serves under “America’s Hitler”).
To be clear: the Pentagon has already warned staffers against using Signal to transmit classified material during this Trump administration, so when Ms. Gabbard or Messrs. Hegseth and Ratcliffe claim they thought it was “fine,” that they did not know better (as they always do), we should assume they are either ignorant or lying—both of which are equally inexcusable.
I mean, Jesus Christ, Mr. Hegseth insisted he was “clean on OPSEC” in a chat that was NOT clean on OPSEC, so we must assume he habitually asserts things instead of verifying them.
Of course they knew better—these people have SCIFs built into their damn houses, so they absolutely are aware they are not supposed to transmit war plans outside of approved channels. To test this, I called one of my high-level DoD sources and asked, “Could you get on Signal and message me some classified information?” They hung up on me.
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Not to flex my own mad OPSEC, but I always check to see who I am in a group chat with before discussing sensitive shit. But, as the youth have become fond of saying, some of us are built different.
Mr. Waltz said: “I don’t know [Mr. Goldberg]. I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. I know him in the sense that he hates the president. But I don’t text him, he wasn’t on my phone, and we’re gonna figure out how this happened.” This is a lie—the Daily Beast provided photographic proof to the contrary. While I cannot find any direct quotes from Mr. Waltz to the Atlantic, writers at the magazine have been sure to call him “intelligent,” “sympathetic,” “serious, thoughtful pe[rson] with a command of [his] field[].” (while bemoaning that he must pretend to be dumber to appease Mr. Trump). My assumption would be that Mr. Waltz has given background information to their reporters more than once, and is well-liked. This, of course, would make him worse than a liar—an unfaithful friend, too.
Mr. Trump declared of Mr. Goldberg, “I happen to know the guy is a total sleazebag,” without offering any support for the assertion. He continued: “The Atlantic is a failed magazine, does very, very poorly.” In fact, the magazine is profitable and has a million subscribers in an era where you can no longer buy magazines at the grocery store. “Nobody gives a damn about it.” That is not true—I look forward to its arrival in my mailbox each month.
However, we have one point of agreement: I, too, have been deceived by the Atlantic. When I first subscribed, I was promised that a free tote bag would be included with my order. It has been many months, I have called many times, and they have not yet sent me this tote bag. I have spent hours on the line, on hold, calling and calling, but no matter how many times they assure me it is on the way, there is still no tote bag. If I cannot trust them to keep their word on this, what else will they lie about?
As reported by the Drug Enforcement Agency, Signal is beloved by drug dealers and users, mainly because it encrypts their communications so that they are private, secure, untraceable, and will automatically be destroyed. This is the preferred chat tool of people trying to avoid federal surveillance, which is a category that should not include feds who are subject to recordkeeping laws. Why, then, did our highest-ranked public officials see a program routinely used to traffic fentanyl and synthetic opioids and say, “Yes, that is exactly what we need”?
(This is not a rhetorical question; the answer is that the Trump administration has more criminals employed than the average cartel.)
I do not object to the government using Signal, but they have the money—they ought to pay. The Signal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It runs on donations to cover expenses such as server infrastructure, bandwidth, and software development, ensuring that Signal remains a free, secure communication tool for users worldwide to do their dirty deeds. If our senior-most war planners are going to drop their memes and fucking missile coordinates in the same chat, then maybe the Department of Defense should cut Signal a check. If they do not, they are not only reckless crooks, but also wastrels and ingrates.
Signal accepts tax-deductible donations through credit card, PayPal, crypto, bank transfer, and physical checks. If the DoD wants to contribute $10,000 or more (they should), they can contact the developers directly at donate@signal.org. Mail is accepted at Signal Technology Foundation, 650 Castro Street, Suite 120-223, Mountain View, CA 94041.
This is not a minor grievance. Through 2013-2016, Signal was developed in part with money from the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a nonprofit that promotes Internet freedom through secure communication technologies, which was created and funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the federal agency overseeing U.S.-funded international broadcasting. Recently, President Elon Musk’s DOGE goons, in conjunction with his co-President Trump, have tried to dismantle this agency (under the stewardship of election-denying and perennial failed crank candidate Kari Lake, who routinely accosts strangers). They call this “eating the seed corn”—taking all your profit now and leaving the fields that fed you bare for the future. It could also be called “shooting the horse you rode in on.”
Not to sound like a FOSS guy, because I find quite a bit of open-source software to be unusable (at least, I really, really hate GIMP), but reliance on open tech built with public funding should impart a responsibility to sustain it, and I do think it troubling that these officials prefer open source tools built by nonprofits instead of all the fancy, approved tools the government has paid for and contracted.
I reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, my lodestar on topics of digital ethics, for comment or clarification. They provided:
Hex: Does reliance on open tech built with public funding imply a
responsibility to sustain it?
EFF: I mean the government and big corporations alike love relying on open source software that they contribute nothing to and actively try to harm in some cases. I'm sure they will be insisting on backdoors in signal any day now while still using it for top secret communications. This whole thing is so common there is even an XKCD cartoon about it: https://xkcd.com/2347/
But yes, governments have a responsibility to fund infrastructure, especially the infrastructure that they use.
Hex: Why do you think these officials prefer open source tools built by nonprofits over those built, contracted or paid for by the government itself?
EFF: Because its free! And its often better than corporate / enterprise alternatives which tend to suffer from enshittification. I mean I would love to see my tax dollars paying for these tools instead of say, bombs in Yemen, but these tools work better when they are built for everyone's needs, not just the government or a fortune 500 company. I would bet that if you sampled 500 microsoft engineers 90% of them would rather use Signal than Team.
Please also consider donating to the EFF’s urgent mission here.
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Mr. Goldberg, you must be upset by the clickbait title. I will apologize to every reader except you for it. You might have assumed I would defend you more robustly as a fellow journalist and DC insider. Well, I wish I could. But I am quite serious about this tote bag. Expect me to call again in the morning.