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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33143 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Just saw this article about the British intelligence community in response to the Signal leaks https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-spies-intelligence-leaks-trump-blunder-3604544

I think that's an interesting way to gauge how serious (or not serious) this is by observing how allied nations in Five Eyes/Israel/Japan/etc react, especially given they've already been concerned about Intel leaking from the Trump admin

For the UK we have

“There is some deep-rooted fear in the rank and file of intelligence community at the moment,” a UK intelligence source said.

Another security official said trusting the US will be a “challenge”, adding: “This will make the UK more nervous about the conversations they are having and how they are being discussed across groups.”

But it's not just anonymous names, there are some former British officials too

John Foreman, the UK’s defence attache to Moscow until 2022, said the leak could have led to a compromise of US sources, but “worse still the compromise of allied sources”.

And from "Nicholas Williams, a former senior official at Nato and the Ministry of Defence"

“There must be doubts among the UK that the Trump administration can protect the intelligence and its UK source.”

It seems even some US intelligence officials are concerned about this, although no names attached..

A US intelligence official said the leak of US war plans over Signal showed that distrust in the administration is justified. “Why would allies trust the US with their critical intelligence?” they said.

New Zealand Government's declined to comment, but we do have this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/trump-signal-leak-reaction-canada-five-eyes.

Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.

Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.

I can't find anything specific for Australia at the high level but this article from an Australian "Military Operations Expert" says it's concerning and gives their reasoning for it https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-us-group-chat-on-houthi-attack-plans-so-concerning-a-military-operations-expert-explains-253029 with one bit I find rather interesting

If high-level conversations do need to happen on an unclassified platform like Signal, the participants would normally use a code word that doesn’t give away what they’re talking about. This keeps a conversation encrypted to a degree until a secure device can be accessed.

But they come to the conclusion that this is definitely concerning and they're going to be having a bunch of back channel discussions but most likely it's not an immediate deal breaker for intelligence sharing.

Mark Carney has talked about it himself a little but he also has incentive to distance from Trump already what with the trade war and comments on making Canada a state.

US war plans leak shows allied nations must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

I haven't seen or found anything about other nations responses yet. I imagine they're probably going to be along the same lines of "This isn't a deal breaker but it is serious and adding more fear when we're already feeling wary"

The whole thing is really bizarre. Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?

I don't believe the theories about it being deliberate and some manipulative exercise against friendly and hostile foreign governments. Hegseth purportedly posted operational details which isn't 'no classified information was discussed'. It was specific details about a military operation before it occurred. And then in the Senate Intelligence hearing they glossed over things with the CIA Director saying Signal is an approved app for comms like this.

If the whole thing was some sort of PsyOp, why did Hegseth post those details? Did it never happen and the journalist is complicit? Isn't there an easier way to PsyOp without making the administration look incompetent?

I think its just what it looks like. A big stuff up.

Yeah, this is the most likely explanation. They likely just assumed that “JG” was either another JG or was supposed to be there for another reason and that somebody else was handling opsec / the group chat.

American trade representative Jameison Greer is the name I've seen thrown around for who they might have thought it was. That might still be too charitable - the simplest explanation is that many people just don't really look all that closely at who else is on a group chat. You would kind of hope that some measure of care would be taken when we're talking about sensitive information, but people just get used to what they're doing and don't think about it much.

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