When something as bizarre as “Signalgate” happens, I like to give it time before I make my final decision. When a national security wound is raw, it is easy to point fingers, make false accusations, or form an opinion under the sharpened edge of disinformation. Our political powers no longer admit or confess. They lie. They always lie, even when the lie on Wednesday contradicts the lie from Monday. (This happened in this case.) They lie in front of Congress. They lie to each other, and they lie to us. Like most issues, the best case scenario would have been to say “We screwed up.” “We are doubling down to make sure this never happens again, and those involved have been relieved of duty,” but this would require common sense, decency, and admitting we have a whole lot of unqualified people in positions of power. They could have even run a fake punk. Little Petey could have offered to resign and then been rebuked by El Comandante himself, but it’s almost like it never even occurred to them.
I can hear my right-leaning friends screaming, “The Democrats are worse!”
Peter Zeihan is an interesting guy. And for those of you about to say he’s an idiot, unqualified, or a government agent or some other scheme your master told you to say, my guess is Peter knows a lot more about this subject than you do. Maybe you did your “research” on Facebook and came to another conclusion. Who knows? A few weeks have gone by, the administration has stopped the charade by refusing to talk about the matter, and I figured it would be time to check in on the current state of the affair. (And someone sent me the link to this podcast.)
Peter gives his opinion on how something like this could have happened, but the most plausible explanation to me is that the administration is trying to avoid court. They are using methods that circumvent being recorded traditionally because those methods could come under scrutiny, and they do NOT want to have this stuff come out in court. Using a compromised third-party app was better than official methods because official methods aren’t great when you are doing things you shouldn’t be doing.
For those of you right-wing babies who will whine about this post or try to paint me as a “lib,” you can save your breath. Go back and read. I am fascinated by this story, not the politics. I have a keen interest in national security, how data is controlled and safeguarded, and how our government operates. I’m not anti-military or anti-technology. Heck, I use Signal. With one person. A retired gentleman in Europe who sends me pictures of flowers of birds. I guess that makes me an expert.
Comments 17
The school district where I work has greater security than this bunch of bumbling idiots. Why would anyone share their sources and information with a country who hands that info out to the Russians, and threatens to annex their peaceful next-door neighbour and ally.
Author
Ya, it was a bonehead move. Lots of weird happening. Like Hunter said “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
I can tell you from personal experience as someone who had Q, top secret and numerous special access clearances during my working career: at the very least every one of these clowns should have his/her clearance revoked – they should in fact be fired.
Need to know, proper communication channels, and adherence to basic security protocols are easy enough to follow …. These folks are lazy, arrogant and stupid.
Author
I have to say, I love Hegseth saying “We are currently clean on OPSEC.” that just cracks me up. As to your second comment, it doesn’t look like laws matter much anymore. Not sure there is any penalty for breaking security laws, deportation laws, etc. Until someone checks them, it’s gonna keep happening.
By the way, this has absolutely nothing to do with politics or policy – there are rules/laws fhat govern security – either you follow them or you don’t.
Have you read Gil Duran’s papers, a San Francisco journalist, who has been researching and writing about the tech broligarchs for years?
Thenerdreich.com
They have a bay shit crazy plan to crash the world economy for their own benefit. Heard of “buy low sell high”?
Curtis Yarvin is at the heart of RAGE. Remove All Government Employees. Now rebranded as DOGE. Combine that with Project 2025 and we see what is playing out before our eyes.
Destroy democracy and replace it with AI and technology because of course the tech bros know better than anyone.
Author
Yo Tommy, I’m not surprised. To see who these people have become is revolting. Musk, Zuck and Bezos in particular. Their innovation is commendable but they now wear the cloak of pure evil when you learn what they are doing behind the scenes.
I mean, I’m a conservative but I don’t boohoo like a baby. In the words of Johnny Cash, “lifes rough so you gotta be tough”.
Author
I don’t see this as conservative. I think the standard conservative party got hijacked by pure lunacy based on disinformation and hate. I have tons of conservative friends who are not happy with what’s going down. The lunies will go along with anything but I think many conservative folks are in shock because they know now they are being targeted as well.
Just a couple of comments…
“We Are All Liars” – note publication date June 13, 2017.
https://time.com/4805380/lying-telling-the-truth/
The book “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidovitch, referenced in the article, really will make you squirm a little. Unless, of course, you’ve built your career on it. But we all know lying goes way further back than 2017. Does the Bay of Tonkin ring any bells? Or the more benign, “The dog ate my homework.”
. . .
As for Signal being “insecure”, that’s typical double speak combined with misdirection amplified to get eyeballs. If you read the full article in “Wired”:
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-signal-qr-code-phishing-attack/
You will see that the so-called compromise of Signal was actually the use of QR codes with malware attached. People in Ukraine were being sent fake messages from false “friendly” sources encouraging them to open the QR code to join different online groups. Once the malware was installed their devices were compromised. It was not that Signal was compromised – secure E2EE messages were still being sent and received – their own devices were spying on everything they did on their devices. And once a device is compromised its game over.
The possibility of a QR code being used to install malware on your device is not new and not limited to Signal but can occur on WhatsApp, Apple Messenger, any internet page or message.
Outside of the internet malicious QR codes have been found on ATM’s, gas stations pretending to make payments, pay for parking lot instruction signs, even on physical letters from scam artists pretending to be legitimate businesses. In every case, opening a QR code opens the door for potentially compromising your device, no matter what kind it is, without your even knowing it.
Unsolicited QR codes should NEVER be opened and even solicited QR codes or those coming from known companies and friends should be carefully confirmed before opening.
Lastly on this topic, to Signal’s credit, they had taken measures to keep QR codes on that platform from containing malware, well before so-called “Signalgate”. I don’t expect the media to correct a buzzword once everyone is using it, but it should have been called “QR-gate.
But after all that, “Signalgate” has absolutely nothing to do with QR codes. And this is where the misdirection comes in to play. What it does have to do with is people not using a very good and useful tool in a careless way. I don’t expect the media to change the buzzword like “Signalgate” to something more accurate. But if they did perhaps “Sloppygate” would be more appropriate, since those involved didn’t bother to check the members of a group before using it.
PS: I’ve been using Signal since 2014, mostly for cat videos, baby pics, grocery lists.. ahem, and watched it’s feature set mature over that time. A small amount of education allows you to take advantage of even Signal’s more advanced features, easily achieved by simply reading Signal’s extensive online documentation. Otherwise, as is with many other things, its like entering a room blindfolded and finding furniture with your shins. And for Pete’s sake, check your group members before sending a text.
Author
I remember having a conversation with a cyber guy years ago, someone selling a super secure app to the military. He was complimentary of Signal but broke down the weaknesses, and this was YEARS before I knew anyone on the app. And yes, this is about unqualified people, the president’s favorite kind, doing illegal things and getting caught. And again, and this runs both parties, why not fess up and move on instead of lying over and over again.
A Confederacy of Dunces.
Author
It looks that way.
As someone who just retired from over 21 years of military systems and whose job it was to operate and manage the people who run our computer systems and networks—-which the government refers to them as “weapons systems”, for a good reason.
I have seen far less incidents where someone created a far less lapse in the proper handling of securing sensitive information than SignalGate that resulted in severe repercussions than this one. At a minimum the person had their security clearance suspended and additional training imposed.
At this level in the leadership chain, someone would have lost their job for a “loss of trust and confidence” in their ability to lead. Yet, we’ve not even heard of anyone given a minor rebuke from inside the system. Sad. Embarrassing.
Author
The administration only wants incompetent people because they will follow orders, legal or not.
The way to tell you’re doing something wrong in any situation like this is that you’re using your own phone. No high level communications happen on personal devices. Just secure devices with locked in software.
Author
exactly. Clueless for sure but arrogant as well.