If you're going to put a guy in charge who is completely unqualified and has a history of alcohol abuse you should at least make sure he's competent. It's actually very grating to see someone operating at this highest level of authority and treating it like its beneath them. It feels like we're watching history get written by the most entitled and inept among us.
sillyfluke · 2h ago
What kind of tickles me is that any new poltical thriller tv series or movie that posits that matters of state in the US are conducted by serious and knowledgable people is now virtually unwatchable for me. It's virtually impossible to suspend the disbelief required to enjoy something that is so far removed from the reality of today's politicians.
(The recent cringe inducing Deniro series comes to mind)
pjc50 · 3h ago
The entire administration is selected for loyalty. In this environment competence is a threat.
SequoiaHope · 1h ago
> It feels like we're watching history get written by the most entitled and inept among us.
I suspect this is somewhat common in history (this is not meant to excuse it), but we can’t tell because those people still wrote the narrative.
eviks · 3h ago
Competence is part of qualification, so what you're asking for is not possible even in theory
verisimi · 2h ago
True. But what did you think was happening before, with previous governments?
For a High-Tech President, a Hard-Fought E-Victory
For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)
He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.
“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”
[...]
The presidency, for all the power afforded by the office, has been deprived of the tools of modern communication. George W. Bush famously sent a farewell e-mail address to his friends when he took office eight years ago.
While lawyers and the Secret Service balked at Mr. Obama’s initial requests to allow him to keep his BlackBerry, they acquiesced as long as the president - and those corresponding with him - agreed to strict rules. And he had to agree to use a specially made device, which must be approved by national security officials.
whydid · 1h ago
This is an example of the False Equivalency logical fallacy.
kubb · 1h ago
When you feel real love for your favorite celebrity convict, whose incompetence is beyond denying, you'll put your mind to work to search for any device that will enable you to excuse anything he does and who he nominates.
People will talk about "politicians being incompetent", or act like actually anyone who has ever been in the office was like this. It's a pretty close and comforting way to deal with the reality of supporting a fraud without having to admit that you were duped.
verisimi · 55m ago
I don't think so. The original post is based in 'false equivalency'.
My position - for many years - is that government is immoral, and the people who serve in it are the worst; I don't have a preference between blue or red.
yummypaint · 9m ago
What a coincidence that the Kremlin has been pushing that exact line of propaganda to western audiences through mouthpieces like Hegseth for years
enaaem · 1h ago
Imagine Hegseth was a black woman…
beloch · 2h ago
The other members of the five eyes had better be careful about what they share with the U.S. while this is going on.
Public key encryption, like Signal uses, offers good security for most purposes. e.g. It's fantastic for credit card transactions. The problem with using it for transmitting state secrets is that you can't rely on it for long-term secrecy. Even if you avoid MITM or other attacks, a message sent via Signal today could be archived in ciphertext and attacked ten years from now with the hardware/algorithms of ten years in the future. Maybe Signal's encryption will remain strong in ten years. Maybe it will be trivial to crack. If the secrets contained in that message are still sensitive ten years from now, you have a problem.
Anything sent with Signal needs to be treated as published with an unknown delay. If you're sharing intelligence with the U.S., you probably shouldn't find that acceptable.
femto · 2h ago
Even if Signal's encryption implementation is secure, the device on which it is running probably doesn't satisfy TEMPEST requirements. Most consumer crypto is vulnerable in some way to a side-channel attack.
jandrewrogers · 2h ago
Signal has been used widely in US intelligence for many, many years. Nothing about this is new, though perhaps people that never paid attention are just now becoming aware of it. As for the rest of Five Eyes, they use WhatsApp the same way. I’m not sure that WhatsApp would be considered an improvement.
It is clear there is a gap between how people imagine this works, or should work in theory, and how it actually works.
0xEF · 26m ago
They're paying attention to Signal now because Hegseth doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to tech and secrecy, instead acting like someone who has watched too many action films and thinks those are just like real life. The problem is not Signal. The problem is incompetence. Plain and simple. Because he blindly added persons to the group that probably didn't belong there, we now have the infamous "we have OPSEC" line, but instead of questioning why this idiot still has a job anywhere near the intelligence agencies, we're wasting our breath scrutinizing what is easily one of the best opens for secure comes if the user understands how it works.
satanfirst · 1h ago
I'd give different advice.
You shouldn't share state secrets with the US. They will be on or transferred between misconfigured cloud accounts. Some agency will eventually get authorization for analysis of them with an intention of financial espionage. The probable or confirmed loss of them will serve as a plausible deniability for the US when it misuses them.
DaiPlusPlus · 2h ago
> The other members of the five eyes had better be careful about what they share with the U.S. while this is going on.
Right, but this is nothing new: Hegseth is only a recent example of Trump's camp mishandling sensitive docs; I'll bet there's been an inner secret Four Eyes group since the the Mar-a-Lago bathroom official-document-archive story dropped years ago.
What surprises me is that I expected Tulsi Gabbard to be the centre of mishandling allegations, not SecDef.
concordDance · 34m ago
This is silly, many countries use consumer messaging for internal communications. The UK government famously uses whatsapp for example.
TiredOfLife · 41m ago
The encryption is completely irrelevant if the information is sent directly to 3rd parties.
mmooss · 3h ago
Let's pretend you work for a non-US state intelligence agency. How would you find Hesgeth's personal computer in his office on the public Internet? A genuine thought experiment.
o11c · 3h ago
Write an article that he's likely to be interested in reading, spread the link, then mine the browser data just like every other website.
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
Literally just @ him on X. These are the moments of strategic ineptitude you hoard zero days for decades to score.
Teever · 2h ago
I don't want to derail the conversation too much with this but this is the kind of thing that blows my mind with seeing obscenely wealthy/powerful people like Musk and Trump on social media.
At some level of wealth you reach a point where no one can get to you physically. You're completely physically safe and isolated and can't be hurt. That means that the only way someone can get to you is through communicating with you and making you hurt yourself.
That means that social media is your only weakness. This is how adversaries can affect your plans and goals and disrupt your mind. Yet so many of these people seem so oblivious to this and are as terminally online as your average 4channer or facebook mom.
Does this speak to some sort of weakness in these kinds of people or the addictiveness of social media?
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Does this speak to some sort of weakness in these kinds of people or the addictiveness of social media?
They're online because their followers are online. Social media may be the actual lead pipes to our empire [1].
So yes, they are absolutely weaker than leaders with digital hygiene. But the reason they're there is because the American public is similarly weaker.
Sure, I get that there's utility in having an online presence, but these people are wealthy/powerful so they can afford to have someone do that work for them with the public non the wiser.
wmf · 3h ago
Yep. The CIA uses these same techniques to track foreigners of interest (e.g. Putin's entourage) so we should assume other countries are attempting to use similar techniques on American officials.
Title:”0-click deanonymization attack targeting Signal, Discord, other platforms”
Maybe not 0-click anymore, but still applies if the user browsing the internet.
overfeed · 1h ago
Compromise the device of one of his contact and send him a juicy link via telegram that renders "Error: Not viewable on mobile" when opened a phone. Bonus points if the link has 0-day malware dropper
rasz · 47m ago
I would make Witkoff sit on his ass in hotel for 8 hours while my team one room over wirelessly breaks into his phone and gets into those Signal chats.
Not a fan of the Trump administration but I imagine the official pentagon communications systems must be extremely clunky and annoying, and about 20 years behind civilian tech.
During the UK Covid-19 enquiry into gov decision making at that time it came to light that most of the UK cabinet were co-ordinating via Whatsapp groups. Again, I'm not a fan of Boris and Dom Cummings but this makes some sort of sense to me. I recognise the need for government teams to have quick convenient chat available to them. Things move too fast these days to wait for the next cabinet meeting or to arrange things via a series of phone calls.
If some tech geniuses wanted to improve government efficiency, one thing they could do is create secure yet easy to use collaboration software. Maybe give the app a catchy one-letter name.
purpleidea · 1h ago
I can only imagine two possible explanations:
1) He is avoiding some sort of corrupt signals intelligence folks from knowing what he's working on.
2) He is avoiding the government catching him in some corruption by avoiding the official records act.
Anything else?
elsjaako · 41m ago
The same reason teenagers might use Instagram DMs to communicate about school projects - It's just the platform he's familiar with.
Or the same reason I have Whatsapp - communication in my social groups happens there, and if I don't have it I get left out.
Your explanations assume there is some deeper meaning, looking at the tradeoffs for each communication platform, and then coming to some rational conclusion. I don't think there's much evidence for that.
The people around trump just happen to be used to using signal to communicate, and if Pete doesn't get on board he gets left out.
> It is remarkable to what great lengths Hegseth went to use the Signal app, because as defense secretary he has his own communications center which is specialized in keeping him in contact with anyone he wants. This center is commonly called SecDef Cables and is part of Secretary of Defense Communications (SDC) unit.
... but unlike Signal, SDC respects laws requiring accurate record-keeping. And that's why this bunch of lawbreakers want to use Signal. They want to evade any and all accountability once this administration is over.
jmyeet · 4h ago
Where is the "but her emails" crowd now? There are three main issues here:
1. The Defense Department bans the use of Signal for everybody else. Why is that? Why is the Secretary exempt?
2. As we've seen it's pretty easy to add unauthorized people to what should be secure communication channels where classified information is shared; and
3. There are laws around the preservation of governmental records. Expiring Signal messages seems like it's intentionally meant to circumvent these legal requirements ie it's illegal.
We're only 100 days in. We've got 1200 more days of this.
eastbound · 3h ago
> We're only 100 days in. We've got 1200 more days of this.
Sounds like locking her up for bypassing the governmental emails would have been a win, now. Maybe add to that, not doing the Title IX with extrajudicial trials in universities, and not threatening people on race and gender when they are not DEI, etc.
Maybe the entire rule of law and spirit of the democracy and listening to the people should have been upheld during the Obama/Biden era, to avoid all this?
It’s not like people didn’t vote this for a reason.
collingreen · 14m ago
It seems like bad faith to be rabid about Clinton emails and silent about the use (and overwhelmingly sloppy use at that) of signal. Do you care about following security procedures or not?
It's also weird to see you seem to take so much pleasure in lashing out - how can you feel vindication thinking your opponents should have done something about emails but not have that same feeling now? How do you hold both views (and with such vitriol) at the same time?
The hypocrisy is why folks find it hard to take these complaints at face value since we show time and time again that they appear more "my team should win the game" than anything consistent and built on principles.
I'm struggling to not write more details here but generally I think the whataboutism and completely ignoring degree is absurd. I remember when the big complaints about Obama were wearing the wrong color suit, saluting with a coffee cup, and allowing a military strike on a us citizen actively working with Al queda. If you want to be convincing (you may not want this- if you just want to feel self righteous and vengeful then carry on) then I think a better path would be explaining why this current situation is a good thing (or at least the same level of bad as the things you hate).
semi-extrinsic · 1h ago
> Sounds like locking her up for bypassing the governmental emails would have been a win, now.
Under what basis should one have "locked her up"? All legal experts agree that there was no crime committed which could result in a prison sentence. This is specifically because none of the emails were classified.
viraptor · 1h ago
> Sounds like locking her up for bypassing the governmental emails would have been a win, now.
This is getting stupid to bring up, but at least we've got a canonical long response to that with a proper legal analysis.
https://youtu.be/cw1tNTIEs-o
croes · 2h ago
They vote this to get it worse?
Strange logic.
Supermancho · 4h ago
> Where is the "but her emails" crowd now?
Same place everyone else is now. Nobody cares about the flagrant violations by the executive. This is the foxes walking around freely now.
nonethewiser · 3h ago
Nobody? Including yourself?
mcfedr · 4h ago
Why are your police not investigating this? The guy is actively breaking the law
foota · 4h ago
If you're not aware, these are federal laws, and the force responsible for investigating and arresting people who break them are a part of the executive branch.
Morizero · 1h ago
And the top executive is arguing that they are only accountable to him
t-3 · 3h ago
How many politicians have you seen blatantly breaking the law like this and having no problem? It happens over and over again. A lower-level flunky would be in prison, but a political appointee is going to be just fine, forced resignation is the worst that could possibly happen to him. Our system is just that corrupt. The same thing happens with leaks - politician or cabinet member leaking is normal, rando bureaucrat leaking is enemy of the state.
idle_zealot · 4h ago
Judges are investigating and holding trials. The Executive is being obstructive and outright ignoring court orders. Rule of law and the balance of powers have collapsed. Turns out that running a decade+ long misinformation campaign to sow distrust of all legal institutions, as well as expertise and professionalism in general is sufficient to topple the world's oldest democracy. If only there had been any effective counter-messaging things may have been different, but that's impossible with our "left" hollowed out by capital.
SubiculumCode · 4h ago
Because Trump does not investigate himself, and the once independent Attorney General is now just another political arm of Trump, but with prosecutorial power and discrtion. We are in dark times.
jdminhbg · 4h ago
> the once independent Attorney General
This has never been the case; JFK appointed his little brother AG. The problem is that the Congress should be investigating and prosecuting the president but will not.
intermerda · 3h ago
> This has never been the case;
Independence of the Justice Department has been the norm since and because of Watergate.
jdminhbg · 2h ago
It's been a nice kind of fig leaf, but constitutionally the president is the AG's boss, so it doesn't make any sense for the AG to investigate the president. There's an entire branch of government given this power in the Constitution, they've just decided they don't want it.
xp84 · 1h ago
Exactly. Congress doesn’t want any of their duties. War declaration? Nah, let the President do it and call it “not a war.” Budget? Well, technically we’ll appropriate funds, but we’ll only do a big CR once in a while. Tariff policy? Nah, let the President do it all with the “national security” loophole, no matter how absurd. Impeachment and removal? Well, not when it’s your party’s guy.
For all the hate Trump gets, it’s Congress who’s created and who props up this monarchy.
slt2021 · 4h ago
always have been, its just current admin is less subtle about it
SubiculumCode · 4h ago
So you say, but I've seen plenty of independence...see Trump's first term for some examples.
JohnTHaller · 5h ago
Of course, there will be no consequences for his complete lack of... everything
mlinhares · 5h ago
Oh there will be, just not for him. We’ll never know how many state secrets have been leaked through these shenanigans.
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
> there will be, just not for him
Everyone in this administration has to know they’re spending the decade after Trump in front of the Congress and various investigators.
gmac · 2h ago
Let’s hope so. But of course this is also a heavy incentive for all of them to make sure their regime never leaves power.
xp84 · 1h ago
Nah, because the Dems can’t win elections, and Republicans will never hold any Trump ally accountable.
JumpCrisscross · 45m ago
This is probably what the DOGE kids are being pitched. There is a reason the most wantonly criminal conduct is coming from those too stupid or naïve to understand we haven't transitioned to a one-party state.
CapricornNoble · 35m ago
Can't Trump just pull a Biden, and toss a blanket decade-long pardon to his entire staff? Would anyone bother to investigate them after that?
collingreen · 2m ago
He can do that - presidents have a long history of abusing pardons. Trump has shown he is happy to pardon people without much thought either for media attention (j6?) or for money (levandowski?).
On the other hand trump isn't very loyal to his people so far - remember the wasteland of trump advisors and officials in the first term getting convicted of various frauds without getting pardoned (or the lawyer on tape saying he needs a pardon for trying to overturn the election and him not getting it).
Not that it matters but I don't think Biden gave a blanket pardon to his entire staff I think he pardoned people who he thinks are dangerously and unfairly targeted by some extreme media like fauci and Bidens son hunter.
At the end of the day pretty much all of the limits of presidential power come from restraint, especially (but not exclusively) in todays world of a tame judiciary. If the president cares about or wants to be seen as caring about the rule of law it is a bad look to wantonly disregard it too often.
Yes, there are a lot of folks who want to believe everything their chosen guy does is absolutely right but realistically each bad thing chips away at their ability to ignore the evidence. I know several people who have lost faith in trump as the evidence continues to absolutely pile up that he doesn't match the values they were told to appreciate (rule of law, respect for the constitution, human rights, fairness, Christian values, intelligence). If he gives a blanket pardon to everyone that worked for him a few more people will say "wait, maybe the other side was right and this IS a huge abuse" so it's possible, especially if we continue to have elections, that we won't see this kind of thing.
mmooss · 4h ago
There will be none if you do nothing.
gotoeleven · 4h ago
My understanding is that the use of signal started during biden's term. Is this not true?
cosmicgadget · 3h ago
Are you being intentionally nonspecific? The use of Signal for some purpose doesn't somehow mean it is appropriate for any purpose.
TiredOfLife · 37m ago
During Obama they used a shared Gmail account by passing messages using the drafts feature.
collingreen · 1m ago
Who is "they"?
intermerda · 4h ago
Not true at all. The use of Signal started during Obama's first or second term. While the app's first release was during his second term, it existed under various names and forms way back. Wikipedia has a great article on its history.
I personally started using signal some time around 2018 and I'm sure there were millions of users by the time Biden began his term.
rcbdev · 2h ago
You must be intentionally acting dense.
mmooss · 4h ago
I thought the GP means that goverment officials such as the Secretary of Defense started using Signal during Biden's administration (though with no basis for that offered, yet).
mmooss · 4h ago
Do you have any evidence?
whattheheckheck · 4h ago
Nope
iambateman · 5h ago
I wish more people, especially media writers, would start with the presumption that "circumventing the state-approved security machine" is a _feature_ of this administration.
Not to pick on this in particular – nearly all the reporting on this starts and ends with "Signal is insecure" as if that was all it took to be wrong. And in other eras, that was enough.
The man likes Signal. For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
Here, his signal comms are likely top secret and we would have no way of knowing if his office followed the legally allowed step of forwarding after the fact for many years.
collingreen · 33s ago
And now we won't know, ever. Which is exactly the point of avoiding the system.
godelski · 4h ago
There's similar record keeping for lots of officials. Government loves keeping records
glaucon · 3h ago
> What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time
Real-time might be nice but there's value in reading material at this level with almost any delay.
In 1949 a US counter-intelligence program(me), the Venona project[1] decrypted Soviet cables from 1945 which made it almost certain the First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington DC [2] was a Soviet asset. That wouldn't have happened if the Soviets hadn't misused their channels of communication.
I don't understand it either. It's not as if you can accidentally message war plans to unauthorized parties on Signal.
ineedasername · 3h ago
“We are currently clean on OPSEC.” -Pete Hegseth
mitthrowaway2 · 4h ago
I think one of the issues is that at least some of the Signal war-plans chat group participants had their messages set to auto-delete. If that's the reason that they're using Signal, it is indeed a problem, even if Signal is secure.
sudahtigabulan · 4h ago
nitpick: disappearing messages are either enabled for everyone in the group or for no one.
grimpy · 4h ago
> There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
Is your point that, in the space of your own lack of knowledge, that reasonable rational may exist? Could you share what gives you trust in this administration to be so generous?
iambateman · 4h ago
Great question, thanks for asking.
My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
I think this article is about one of two things…either there is a possibility that SecDef using Signal represents an ongoing, material national security crisis that should be a concern for all Americans…or it’s really the author grieving for a time when they felt safer because the strict protocols of confidentiality signaled (pun intended) a sense of seriousness about government secrets.
If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know. If it’s a sad liberal, the result will be counter-productive and large numbers of people-in-power will read this article as a win for their team.
ineedasername · 4h ago
The fact that everyone in the country knows specific details of what and how he communicates, is a national security crisis. If signal was secure and/or he was following reasonable precautions, no one would know anything about this issue.
billiam · 3h ago
Clown take. The use of Signal or any app on a non-secure device by SecDef for what we know he messaged about in his office is absolutely a primary national security threat. Firing offense for any senior Pentagon official dealing with highly classified traffic. Nothing to do with politics.
CapricornNoble · 26m ago
Agreed. I thought Lloyd Austin should have been fired for going into surgery without advising his deputy or any of his staff of the risks, and his deputy should have been fired for taking over for him.....without leaving her vacation in Puerto Rico.
I think SecDef Hegseth is actually an even bigger disaster than SecDef Austin. That said....I think the Deep State/ military industrial complex/ Israel lobby is trying to get Hegseth fired because he's one of the Big 3 (Vance/Hegseth/Gabbard) opposed to going kinetic with Iran. But he's making it really easy for his adversaries, because he legitimately sucks at some foundational skills for management at his level.
rl3 · 3h ago
>If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know.
Because personal smartphones aren't considered secure for protecting classified information. Signal in and of itself might be fine when used properly, but it doesn't matter when the underlying platform is consumer-grade security. The risk of side-channel attacks is astronomical.
>My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
>If it’s a sad liberal, ...
I'm not sure any of that furthers whatever argument you're trying to make. Signal being used in that manner didn't only violate a myriad of established protocols, but it was straight up illegal on top of it. In any normal political climate we would've seen resignations from day one, regardless of party.
zmgsabst · 4h ago
I see this as partisan:
- one side ignored Clinton using a private server as sec of state
- this one ignores using Signal
I haven’t seen arguments about what the standard is supposed to be or why this in particular is egregious. That would be more convincing than hyperventilating.
Edit:
If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
I don’t follow the allegation its mere presence is problematic, when discussing general communications with other parts of the administration. Especially when accessed via separate/dedicated machine (distinct from secured systems).
If you want to talk about the specifics of, eg, the Yemen war plans then do that — but this article does not.
freddie_mercury · 4h ago
How was an FBI and DOJ and investigation by the Obama administration "one side ignoring it"?
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
> what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
The DoD kit makes it a little bit harder to add randos to chats where one needlessly posts tactical air strike details.
godelski · 4h ago
What if you believe both Clinton and Hegseth are in the wrong?
I hold this position and I don't think it's uncommon. Plenty of people think if something is wrong then it doesn't matter who does it.
There's definitely perception bias. Usually conversations are short when we're in agreement. Doesn't create engagement. Doesn't make for good news
watwut · 2h ago
There was whole massive campaign against her comparatively much milder infraction. It is crickets now. It was huge.
So, maybe 10 of you care, but the assymetry is beyond apparent.
For that matter, I remember when Obamas tan suit was horrible unpresidential infraction amd lack of respect. Same people voted for Trump not a peep about respectability.
jorts · 4h ago
Sharing details as he has done would put my brother who works for the Navy in the brig. As someone in his role he should know better but he’s only in his role as he will do whatever Trump asks him to. He was a O4, there’s a zero percent chance of him being knowledgeable enough to be competent in his role.
CapricornNoble · 14m ago
I know some pretty competent O-4s...but also a TON of mouth-breathing field grade officers too. Hegseth sucks on his own merits (or lack thereof) as a person.
Just as a few examples of adequately-successful SecDefs coming from "unimpressive" paper resumes.
2419410794 · 4h ago
> If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
There are two issues. First, official communications about the workings of government ought to occur on government platforms, so that there's a permanent record for the communication. (As others have mentioned, this is required by the Federal Records Act.)
Second, the Pentagon has limited phone service and limited public internet access by design. The other computers in the office, while for unclassified material, are not (as I understand it) connected to the public internet like Hegseth's personal laptop is.
That said, I have no issue if Hegseth wants to use Signal to make dinner plans with other government officials.
logifail · 3h ago
> First, official communications [..]
Unfortunately the list of politicians who either don't care about records of their communications being properly kept, or who went out of their way to keep their comms "off the books" is long.
We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one.
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
> We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one
We should and do. FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.
logifail · 56m ago
> FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.
Correct, and this was the outcome:
[FBI director James Comey said] "Clinton had been 'extremely careless' but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution"
Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?
JumpCrisscross · 46m ago
> Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?
Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a good default.
> Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a good default
(From the other side the pond) it does seem that legal standards such that one are applied very selectively in the USA, apparently depending heavily on the political leanings of those involved in any (potential) case.
On the other hand, at least you do actually run elections to pick your POTUS, this side of the Atlantic we get the President of the European Commissions based on a back-room deal and a Soviet-style "vote" in the Parliament with no choice. To top it off, when she first got the job in 2019, VdL wasn't even a candidate for it during the immediately preceeding European elections.
logifail · 2h ago
> We should and do
The European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'
> European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'
Sure. They still wound up in court. Hegseth hasn't had to go to court to defend himself because he hasn't even been investigated. You really have to go back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to find these levels of exploitable ineptitude at the highest ranks of a major military structure.
logifail · 1h ago
> Sure. They still wound up in court.
That case was brought by the New York Times, not any oversight body or investigative function of the EU, which makes it even more cringe-worthy.
"The European Commission faced an embarrassing grilling for almost five hours on Friday as top EU judges cast doubt on the executive’s commitment to transparency on the Covid-19 vaccine negotiations. The EU institution defended itself in a packed EU court in Luxembourg in the so-called Pfizergate case, brought by the New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-Gridneff."
The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to court?
JumpCrisscross · 55m ago
> The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to court?
The Times sued to get Von der Leyen to share information. Hegseth already does that because he's an idiot. To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a meaningful way.
logifail · 44m ago
> The Times sued to get Von der Leyen to share information
...and failed
> To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a meaningful way
...and as it turned out, neither is VdL.
JumpCrisscross · 29m ago
The case didn't succeed in producing the records. But the process uncovered a lot of shit.
But again, you're comparing non-disclosure to irresponsible disclosure. VdL didn't send highly sensitive scramble times to a rando.
logifail · 4m ago
(With apologies if this appears provocative)
Is there evidence that SECDEF 'acted with criminal intent'?
We've already clarified that '[being] extremely careless' is not enough for a court case.
[I have a mental picture of a Venn diagram with three circles: "Politicians", "Idiots" and "Criminals"...]
jandrewrogers · 3h ago
The issue is much deeper and more concerning. They’ve been using Signal like this across multiple administrations because the “official” tools are broken to the point of being almost useless. Signal has been one of the major workarounds.
It isn’t enough to say “don’t use Signal”, at some point they need to address the reality that there are no functional alternatives.
patrickhogan1 · 4h ago
Bingo. If a hacker did this it would be understood as a sign that the comms aren’t secure and praised. He was clearly briefed on Salt Typhoon.
The thing I am more bothered by is why would he take a picture of his desk, thereby narrowing the attack profile.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 3h ago
Regarding Signal:
Check out what happened to the Signal FOSS fork.
Then check out what Molly is doing, and why.
Personally I'd favor Briar over Signal any day.
2419410794 · 4h ago
> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications?
Yes. The law requires that classified information be handled under certain standards.
> _Why_ is it insecure?
Classified data is being transmitted on an unsecured device. If Hegseth's personal phone has Uber, Tinder, ... whatever apps installed, that software is running on a device that's contains national secrets.
Systems which handle classified data are meant to be airgapped from the normal internet/normal software.
The issue is not that signal is insecure, but rather that sensitive government information demands additional precaution (e.g. airgapping).
There's a separate issue that there are legal requirements for maintaining records of government communication. Using a personal device (especially with disappearing messages) is illegal since it doesn't maintain this documentation.
Additionally, classified information is tracked to see who read it and when. In the event of a security leak, this can help isolate where the leak happened. If the information gets posted on Signal, then there's nothing more that can be tracked.
> For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
That's not the way rule of law works. The Secretary of Defense doesn't get to _decide_ we're doing things differently now. His actions, as well as the actions of his staff, are bound by the laws that congress has passed.
> We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
The onus should not be on the general public to convince the Secretary of Defense to adhere to bog standard requirements for handling sensitive information. If he has an idea, "I think using Signal on my personal phone to discuss imminent military actions is better than using a secure line," he could push that idea forward. Have the Pentagon's security staff evaluate the idea. Instead, he simply did it.
SubiculumCode · 4h ago
The issue is that it has all been done with great incompetence, and with apparent glorification of ignorance as a sign of bravado. I, for one, want serious people in charge of my defense, not sycophants more concerned with their stage makeup, hair, fitted suit, and with 'owning the libs' than defending our nation.
curiousgal · 4h ago
> help coordinate our national defense
I mean, thinking the DoD is actually defending the U.S. is where you went wrong. The stakes are so incredibly low that none of this actually matters.
(The recent cringe inducing Deniro series comes to mind)
I suspect this is somewhat common in history (this is not meant to excuse it), but we can’t tell because those people still wrote the narrative.
For a High-Tech President, a Hard-Fought E-Victory
For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)
He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.
“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”
[...]
The presidency, for all the power afforded by the office, has been deprived of the tools of modern communication. George W. Bush famously sent a farewell e-mail address to his friends when he took office eight years ago.
While lawyers and the Secret Service balked at Mr. Obama’s initial requests to allow him to keep his BlackBerry, they acquiesced as long as the president - and those corresponding with him - agreed to strict rules. And he had to agree to use a specially made device, which must be approved by national security officials.
People will talk about "politicians being incompetent", or act like actually anyone who has ever been in the office was like this. It's a pretty close and comforting way to deal with the reality of supporting a fraud without having to admit that you were duped.
My position - for many years - is that government is immoral, and the people who serve in it are the worst; I don't have a preference between blue or red.
Public key encryption, like Signal uses, offers good security for most purposes. e.g. It's fantastic for credit card transactions. The problem with using it for transmitting state secrets is that you can't rely on it for long-term secrecy. Even if you avoid MITM or other attacks, a message sent via Signal today could be archived in ciphertext and attacked ten years from now with the hardware/algorithms of ten years in the future. Maybe Signal's encryption will remain strong in ten years. Maybe it will be trivial to crack. If the secrets contained in that message are still sensitive ten years from now, you have a problem.
Anything sent with Signal needs to be treated as published with an unknown delay. If you're sharing intelligence with the U.S., you probably shouldn't find that acceptable.
It is clear there is a gap between how people imagine this works, or should work in theory, and how it actually works.
You shouldn't share state secrets with the US. They will be on or transferred between misconfigured cloud accounts. Some agency will eventually get authorization for analysis of them with an intention of financial espionage. The probable or confirmed loss of them will serve as a plausible deniability for the US when it misuses them.
Right, but this is nothing new: Hegseth is only a recent example of Trump's camp mishandling sensitive docs; I'll bet there's been an inner secret Four Eyes group since the the Mar-a-Lago bathroom official-document-archive story dropped years ago.
What surprises me is that I expected Tulsi Gabbard to be the centre of mishandling allegations, not SecDef.
At some level of wealth you reach a point where no one can get to you physically. You're completely physically safe and isolated and can't be hurt. That means that the only way someone can get to you is through communicating with you and making you hurt yourself.
That means that social media is your only weakness. This is how adversaries can affect your plans and goals and disrupt your mind. Yet so many of these people seem so oblivious to this and are as terminally online as your average 4channer or facebook mom.
Does this speak to some sort of weakness in these kinds of people or the addictiveness of social media?
They're online because their followers are online. Social media may be the actual lead pipes to our empire [1].
So yes, they are absolutely weaker than leaders with digital hygiene. But the reason they're there is because the American public is similarly weaker.
[1] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wi...
Title:”0-click deanonymization attack targeting Signal, Discord, other platforms”
Maybe not 0-click anymore, but still applies if the user browsing the internet.
https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-fixer-was-made-to-wait-eig...
His personal PC? Send Big Ballz his way to do some upgrades
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...
maybe a free Starlink dish
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-sta...
During the UK Covid-19 enquiry into gov decision making at that time it came to light that most of the UK cabinet were co-ordinating via Whatsapp groups. Again, I'm not a fan of Boris and Dom Cummings but this makes some sort of sense to me. I recognise the need for government teams to have quick convenient chat available to them. Things move too fast these days to wait for the next cabinet meeting or to arrange things via a series of phone calls.
Similarly we can look back to Obama having to fight to keep his Blackberry in 2009 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28780205
1) He is avoiding some sort of corrupt signals intelligence folks from knowing what he's working on.
2) He is avoiding the government catching him in some corruption by avoiding the official records act.
Anything else?
Or the same reason I have Whatsapp - communication in my social groups happens there, and if I don't have it I get left out.
Your explanations assume there is some deeper meaning, looking at the tradeoffs for each communication platform, and then coming to some rational conclusion. I don't think there's much evidence for that.
The people around trump just happen to be used to using signal to communicate, and if Pete doesn't get on board he gets left out.
... but unlike Signal, SDC respects laws requiring accurate record-keeping. And that's why this bunch of lawbreakers want to use Signal. They want to evade any and all accountability once this administration is over.
1. The Defense Department bans the use of Signal for everybody else. Why is that? Why is the Secretary exempt?
2. As we've seen it's pretty easy to add unauthorized people to what should be secure communication channels where classified information is shared; and
3. There are laws around the preservation of governmental records. Expiring Signal messages seems like it's intentionally meant to circumvent these legal requirements ie it's illegal.
We're only 100 days in. We've got 1200 more days of this.
Sounds like locking her up for bypassing the governmental emails would have been a win, now. Maybe add to that, not doing the Title IX with extrajudicial trials in universities, and not threatening people on race and gender when they are not DEI, etc.
Maybe the entire rule of law and spirit of the democracy and listening to the people should have been upheld during the Obama/Biden era, to avoid all this?
It’s not like people didn’t vote this for a reason.
It's also weird to see you seem to take so much pleasure in lashing out - how can you feel vindication thinking your opponents should have done something about emails but not have that same feeling now? How do you hold both views (and with such vitriol) at the same time?
The hypocrisy is why folks find it hard to take these complaints at face value since we show time and time again that they appear more "my team should win the game" than anything consistent and built on principles.
I'm struggling to not write more details here but generally I think the whataboutism and completely ignoring degree is absurd. I remember when the big complaints about Obama were wearing the wrong color suit, saluting with a coffee cup, and allowing a military strike on a us citizen actively working with Al queda. If you want to be convincing (you may not want this- if you just want to feel self righteous and vengeful then carry on) then I think a better path would be explaining why this current situation is a good thing (or at least the same level of bad as the things you hate).
Under what basis should one have "locked her up"? All legal experts agree that there was no crime committed which could result in a prison sentence. This is specifically because none of the emails were classified.
This is getting stupid to bring up, but at least we've got a canonical long response to that with a proper legal analysis. https://youtu.be/cw1tNTIEs-o
Strange logic.
Same place everyone else is now. Nobody cares about the flagrant violations by the executive. This is the foxes walking around freely now.
This has never been the case; JFK appointed his little brother AG. The problem is that the Congress should be investigating and prosecuting the president but will not.
Independence of the Justice Department has been the norm since and because of Watergate.
For all the hate Trump gets, it’s Congress who’s created and who props up this monarchy.
Everyone in this administration has to know they’re spending the decade after Trump in front of the Congress and various investigators.
On the other hand trump isn't very loyal to his people so far - remember the wasteland of trump advisors and officials in the first term getting convicted of various frauds without getting pardoned (or the lawyer on tape saying he needs a pardon for trying to overturn the election and him not getting it).
Not that it matters but I don't think Biden gave a blanket pardon to his entire staff I think he pardoned people who he thinks are dangerously and unfairly targeted by some extreme media like fauci and Bidens son hunter.
At the end of the day pretty much all of the limits of presidential power come from restraint, especially (but not exclusively) in todays world of a tame judiciary. If the president cares about or wants to be seen as caring about the rule of law it is a bad look to wantonly disregard it too often.
Yes, there are a lot of folks who want to believe everything their chosen guy does is absolutely right but realistically each bad thing chips away at their ability to ignore the evidence. I know several people who have lost faith in trump as the evidence continues to absolutely pile up that he doesn't match the values they were told to appreciate (rule of law, respect for the constitution, human rights, fairness, Christian values, intelligence). If he gives a blanket pardon to everyone that worked for him a few more people will say "wait, maybe the other side was right and this IS a huge abuse" so it's possible, especially if we continue to have elections, that we won't see this kind of thing.
I personally started using signal some time around 2018 and I'm sure there were millions of users by the time Biden began his term.
Not to pick on this in particular – nearly all the reporting on this starts and ends with "Signal is insecure" as if that was all it took to be wrong. And in other eras, that was enough.
The man likes Signal. For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act
Here, his signal comms are likely top secret and we would have no way of knowing if his office followed the legally allowed step of forwarding after the fact for many years.
Real-time might be nice but there's value in reading material at this level with almost any delay.
In 1949 a US counter-intelligence program(me), the Venona project[1] decrypted Soviet cables from 1945 which made it almost certain the First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington DC [2] was a Soviet asset. That wouldn't have happened if the Soviets hadn't misused their channels of communication.
[1] https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
Is your point that, in the space of your own lack of knowledge, that reasonable rational may exist? Could you share what gives you trust in this administration to be so generous?
My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
I think this article is about one of two things…either there is a possibility that SecDef using Signal represents an ongoing, material national security crisis that should be a concern for all Americans…or it’s really the author grieving for a time when they felt safer because the strict protocols of confidentiality signaled (pun intended) a sense of seriousness about government secrets.
If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know. If it’s a sad liberal, the result will be counter-productive and large numbers of people-in-power will read this article as a win for their team.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-key-figures-found-l...
I think SecDef Hegseth is actually an even bigger disaster than SecDef Austin. That said....I think the Deep State/ military industrial complex/ Israel lobby is trying to get Hegseth fired because he's one of the Big 3 (Vance/Hegseth/Gabbard) opposed to going kinetic with Iran. But he's making it really easy for his adversaries, because he legitimately sucks at some foundational skills for management at his level.
Because personal smartphones aren't considered secure for protecting classified information. Signal in and of itself might be fine when used properly, but it doesn't matter when the underlying platform is consumer-grade security. The risk of side-channel attacks is astronomical.
>My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
>If it’s a sad liberal, ...
I'm not sure any of that furthers whatever argument you're trying to make. Signal being used in that manner didn't only violate a myriad of established protocols, but it was straight up illegal on top of it. In any normal political climate we would've seen resignations from day one, regardless of party.
- one side ignored Clinton using a private server as sec of state
- this one ignores using Signal
I haven’t seen arguments about what the standard is supposed to be or why this in particular is egregious. That would be more convincing than hyperventilating.
Edit:
If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
I don’t follow the allegation its mere presence is problematic, when discussing general communications with other parts of the administration. Especially when accessed via separate/dedicated machine (distinct from secured systems).
If you want to talk about the specifics of, eg, the Yemen war plans then do that — but this article does not.
The DoD kit makes it a little bit harder to add randos to chats where one needlessly posts tactical air strike details.
I hold this position and I don't think it's uncommon. Plenty of people think if something is wrong then it doesn't matter who does it.
There's definitely perception bias. Usually conversations are short when we're in agreement. Doesn't create engagement. Doesn't make for good news
So, maybe 10 of you care, but the assymetry is beyond apparent.
For that matter, I remember when Obamas tan suit was horrible unpresidential infraction amd lack of respect. Same people voted for Trump not a peep about respectability.
SecDef Lovett only rose to O-4 before going into the NYC business community and then becoming a Special Assistant to SecWar Stimpson in 1940. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
SecDef McElroy came up through Proctor & Gamble, no government or military experience. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
Just as a few examples of adequately-successful SecDefs coming from "unimpressive" paper resumes.
There are two issues. First, official communications about the workings of government ought to occur on government platforms, so that there's a permanent record for the communication. (As others have mentioned, this is required by the Federal Records Act.)
Second, the Pentagon has limited phone service and limited public internet access by design. The other computers in the office, while for unclassified material, are not (as I understand it) connected to the public internet like Hegseth's personal laptop is.
That said, I have no issue if Hegseth wants to use Signal to make dinner plans with other government officials.
Unfortunately the list of politicians who either don't care about records of their communications being properly kept, or who went out of their way to keep their comms "off the books" is long.
We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one.
We should and do. FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.
Correct, and this was the outcome:
[FBI director James Comey said] "Clinton had been 'extremely careless' but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution"
Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?
Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a good default.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
(From the other side the pond) it does seem that legal standards such that one are applied very selectively in the USA, apparently depending heavily on the political leanings of those involved in any (potential) case.
On the other hand, at least you do actually run elections to pick your POTUS, this side of the Atlantic we get the President of the European Commissions based on a back-room deal and a Soviet-style "vote" in the Parliament with no choice. To top it off, when she first got the job in 2019, VdL wasn't even a candidate for it during the immediately preceeding European elections.
The European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/10/i-aske...
https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-comm...
Outcome? A(nother) nothingburger.
Sure. They still wound up in court. Hegseth hasn't had to go to court to defend himself because he hasn't even been investigated. You really have to go back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to find these levels of exploitable ineptitude at the highest ranks of a major military structure.
That case was brought by the New York Times, not any oversight body or investigative function of the EU, which makes it even more cringe-worthy.
"The European Commission faced an embarrassing grilling for almost five hours on Friday as top EU judges cast doubt on the executive’s commitment to transparency on the Covid-19 vaccine negotiations. The EU institution defended itself in a packed EU court in Luxembourg in the so-called Pfizergate case, brought by the New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-Gridneff."
The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to court?
The Times sued to get Von der Leyen to share information. Hegseth already does that because he's an idiot. To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a meaningful way.
...and failed
> To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a meaningful way
...and as it turned out, neither is VdL.
But again, you're comparing non-disclosure to irresponsible disclosure. VdL didn't send highly sensitive scramble times to a rando.
Is there evidence that SECDEF 'acted with criminal intent'?
We've already clarified that '[being] extremely careless' is not enough for a court case.
[I have a mental picture of a Venn diagram with three circles: "Politicians", "Idiots" and "Criminals"...]
It isn’t enough to say “don’t use Signal”, at some point they need to address the reality that there are no functional alternatives.
The thing I am more bothered by is why would he take a picture of his desk, thereby narrowing the attack profile.
Check out what happened to the Signal FOSS fork.
Then check out what Molly is doing, and why.
Personally I'd favor Briar over Signal any day.
Yes. The law requires that classified information be handled under certain standards.
> _Why_ is it insecure?
Classified data is being transmitted on an unsecured device. If Hegseth's personal phone has Uber, Tinder, ... whatever apps installed, that software is running on a device that's contains national secrets.
Systems which handle classified data are meant to be airgapped from the normal internet/normal software.
The issue is not that signal is insecure, but rather that sensitive government information demands additional precaution (e.g. airgapping).
There's a separate issue that there are legal requirements for maintaining records of government communication. Using a personal device (especially with disappearing messages) is illegal since it doesn't maintain this documentation.
Additionally, classified information is tracked to see who read it and when. In the event of a security leak, this can help isolate where the leak happened. If the information gets posted on Signal, then there's nothing more that can be tracked.
> For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
That's not the way rule of law works. The Secretary of Defense doesn't get to _decide_ we're doing things differently now. His actions, as well as the actions of his staff, are bound by the laws that congress has passed.
> We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
The onus should not be on the general public to convince the Secretary of Defense to adhere to bog standard requirements for handling sensitive information. If he has an idea, "I think using Signal on my personal phone to discuss imminent military actions is better than using a secure line," he could push that idea forward. Have the Pentagon's security staff evaluate the idea. Instead, he simply did it.
I mean, thinking the DoD is actually defending the U.S. is where you went wrong. The stakes are so incredibly low that none of this actually matters.