Espionage for Dummies

Today I listened to several of my favorite Substacks, and the dialogues were what you’d expect. A thoroughly mind-boggling international breach of a Signal group “war” chat included Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, and about 14 others—including The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Of course, that last person mentioned was not supposed to be there.

And thus began #SignalGate, a colossal episode of capricious stupidity that Saturday Night Live would be hard-pressed to parody. They could save themselves the trouble and just enact the actual group chat thread—except that Goldberg didn’t share the entire thread. He knew that revealing the full thread would endanger undercover individuals.

Actual journalists are writing and podcasting about this, so I won’t dive into the facts here. Still, I want to speak as an independently minded American who believes in what democracy should be. This is a gargantuan problem for the U.S.—a breach so severe that not even former President Trump could distract from headlines about it.

The question I asked myself when I received the breaking news alert was, “How many times has this happened before? How can we possibly feel secure moving forward?” I shudder to ask about the bridges we’re burning with our allies.

I knew about Signal—I used it myself in January to report something suspicious the new administration was doing. The idea that, despite all the resources available to them at the highest levels of government, that grossly unqualified group of individuals believed Signal was a good idea and failed to notice the journalist who (oops) got added to the chat?

Have Putin’s lieutenants been invited? Has China invited itself? Is Israel patched into the party line? Is North Korea listening? What in the fuck is this shit? Imagine the conversations a foreign adversary could be privy to—it makes my head spin. That we have not had a catastrophic international incident may be a miracle, or it may just be a matter of timing. Perhaps something is being planned?

Imagine these idiots sitting in the Situation Room—or whatever those soundproof, impenetrable rooms are called that are reserved for such meetings—scrolling through their group chat history from the last couple of months, trying to decide if maybe someone was included who shouldn’t have been. Absolutely gobsmacking. Now that the damage has been done, the formerly justice-touting-to-the-letter GOP are waving it away as overblown—not a thing. And hey, what about those Tesla terrorists?

Though I’m upset, I am not surprised. The poisonous fruit of this administration has barely begun to ripen. These dipshits in charge of national security will not suddenly be competent tomorrow. No videos from human resources will bring them up to speed on how to do U.S. espionage. We’re stuck until some massive 10.0 seismic movement makes GOP complacency unsurvivable for those cowards and sycophants. Brace yourselves

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