From March 11 to 15, the editor-in-chief of “The Atlantic,”, Jeffrey Goldberg, was unintentionally added to a group chat involving 19 members of the Trump administration. This group included individuals from the United States national security team, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and a CIA officer whose name was not disclosed.
The text messages primarily focused on the United States bombing the locations of the Houthis’ movement in Yemen. This type of situation should not be tolerated, especially within such important parts of the government.
The leak happened when National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently included Goldberg in the thread. Later in a Fox News interview, Waltz later explained that it was a glitch on his phone.
“I think that it is careless, and it shows that the people in our government are not very competent because if you can make that big of a mistake, then, I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to fix that,” freshman Iris Murray-Wright said.
After the leak, the Pentagon started an internal investigation on the issue to discover how the switch-up happened. The investigation is also expected to involve a more in-depth look at personnel access to sensitive information and possible breaches of confidentiality agreements. The aftermath of the leak involved congressional hearings, a second Atlantic article, and additional security errors by intelligence officials.
“The idea that top government officials will be using unsecured communications in order to communicate sort of, very top secret, super sensitive military data that’s going on in real time, is very, very concerning to me. Especially considering the fact that nobody seems to be holding them accountable,” senior Joshua Lin said. “I feel like Congress isn’t holding them accountable, Trump isn’t holding them accountable, and they haven’t said anything, they haven’t resigned yet.”
Another concern is that there could be more than just this one group chat used with government officials on Signal. This could also make it easier for other countries to hack into these systems because they don’t have the proper security measures to protect it.
“So it just makes one wonder what more is going on out there that our government officials aren’t talking about, that they’re hiding from us,” Lin said.
The Trump administration’s response to the leak started with National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes confirming that the messages in Signal were real. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Elon Musk had offered his technical abilities to help the White House find out how Goldberg was added to the Signal group.
Many administration members were still very shocked to hear about the breach, and some believed that the incident would result in dismissals. However, there are no current indications that Trump will be firing anyone involved. Because of this leak, the entire country could be put in danger or chaos because of the disregard for national security within government communications.
