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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33115 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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'Many things are happening, so many things are happening at once that sometimes I have no idea what's going on.'

This is likely an apocryphal quote misattributed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in March 2025 via the memetic slop factory. It's one of the factory's better creations and it captures my feeling this afternoon.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, publishes the above account regarding his participation in a special kind of Signal group chat 15 days ago. In this chat strikes against the Houthis were planned, out in the open, with Jeffrey privy to it all. According to the account he gives in the article, Jeffrey was invited by national security advisor Michael Waltz. According to Jeffrey, he was confused, skeptical, and suspicious of this chat.

Seriously, you should read the whole thing.

It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me...

I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

This group chat led to another group chat-- "Houthi PC small group". If true, I am sure Jeffrey's concerns about entrapment and imprisonment grew as he was, allegedly, joined by the Secretary of Defense, Vice President Vance, Tulsi Gabbard. In total, "18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials" as they discussed, coordinated, and monitored strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen-- and presumably some other things.

We [Atlantic staffers] discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds.

I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

Nonetheless, as Jeffrey fretted over his strange-getting-stranger position in a Signal chat group among, allegedly, the highest officials in US public office, these individuals were discussing what to do about the Houthi problem. Jeffrey identifies JD Vance's chat avatar as a cautious, moderating voice on the 14th of March:

The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, in addition to relaying the above and other interactions that went on in the chat he was in, also posted screenshots as receipts-- just in case you thought he was crazy.

In Jeffrey Goldberg's words: "I was still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And I remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of foreign-policy insight were impressive."

According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed.

After the chat, bombs get dropped, Jeffrey confirms the timeline matches what he saw planned, and the chat goes wild.

Some things to talk about as mentioned in the article:

  1. Journalisms. Jeffrey surely had a responsibility to leave this group chat when he figured this was a real thing really happening and he wasn't supposed to be there. As in, legally he shouldn't be privy to classified stuff. On the other hand, if true, this is what journalists are for. If Jeffrey had simply left the chat and reported it as such there's no story. I'm not sure how much I buy the "I'm just a lowly journalist who couldn't believe his eyes if this is real or not" shtick, but also can't really fault the guy for staying in the chat. After all, he was invited.

  2. Security and legal concerns. If the Trump admin is conducting official business on an open-source platform that is supposed to scrub its history this seems probably illegal. It is possible these messages are documented some other way, but it's possible they are not. Just as it is possible Signal is a totally secure, encrypted messaging program, but it's possible it is not.

  3. Goldberg highlights the dialogue that focuses on concerns of US-Euro relations. Wish I could read the full discussions. It seems fine to give Europe a carrot of engaging Houthis -- helping to secure their trade in the Suez -- in addition to the stick as they move to rearm. I don't think the American public has much love for Houthi rebels, though escalating involvement is a concern. I think this supports the idea that this administration is closely wedded to the news cycle rather than strategy or vision. Consideration of what this does for Europe should be second to deterring disruption to global trade-- which should have been priority from the beginning. We are missing lots of context.

  4. What if Elon Musk was gas lighting and trolling journalists with the power and resources of the United States Government behind him?

The level of ineptitude in OPSEC failure for this article to be real is staggering. It blows my mind. Which, as Jeffrey also suspected, makes one wonder if it wasn't intentional. Maybe Jeffrey was invited to one chat to be leveraged for something else, then accidentally invited to the Houthi PC chat. He might have been supposed to be in all those chats to leak it all. Comparisons to Crooked Hillary and her e-mail server abound.

To end, VP Vance reportedly typing “a prayer for victory” after a course of action was decided upon. Followed by two of our nation's best adding "prayer emoji" reactions. All of it is a bit on the nose for Clown World Simulation theory. Exciting times!

This situation is comically stupid, even by the established standards of the Trump admin. I don't even really see much of a problem with them using Signal for sensitive communication, in theory (it's not like they were using Telegram); yes, the government should have its own internal secure platform for something like this but I would not be surprised if, in practice, that secure platform is just "email" which would be such a pain in the ass as to make me sympathetic to the signal-using officials. But, good lord, literally inviting a journalist into your government chat? What??? How did none of them notice he was in the chat? Clown world indeed.

Honestly, I don't buy the theories that this leak was intentional (or at least that the leak was intentional on the part of the Trump admin as an entity, it could've been intentional with the goal of embarrassing them) -- what would they stand to gain? They just look like a bunch of idiots. And the "intentional leak to embarrass the cabinet" theory doesn't make sense either since the invite came from the goddamn National Security Advisor. Therefore I have to conclude that this comes from simple gross incompetence. Defenses of this from sympathetic right-wingers are pretty weak as well, just compare it to the (justified) furor about the Hillary Clinton email server... this might not be worse in terms of practical effect, but that's mostly because the journalist himself chose not to do anything with the information he received until after the strikes took place. I'm a little surprised there isn't even more outcry from Democrats but I guess they don't tend to get riled up about national security the way Republicans do.

If I were President in this situation I would, honestly, fire the guy who invited the journalist on the spot. Everyone else involved here is breaching protocol, yes, and they really should have noticed that "hey, one of these guys isn't a government official", and sure, it's just one simple mistake -- but fat-fingering the invite for a group chat such that you leak the details of an upcoming military operation to the press seems to me to be so profoundly dumb (and utterly oblivious to any notion of OPSEC) as to disqualify you outright from serving in any sensitive position. If he had done it intentionally, this would arguably be treason.

If nothing else, it's terrible PR for the administration. I will be surprised if Waltz keeps his job longer than the next few days, especially given Trump's reputation for turnover.

My conspiracy mind wonders if there’s some secret switch in Signal which only gets enabled (by who?) for journalists, so they can view chats unseen in “spectator mode” for reporting purposes. This would explain why nobody saw JG in the chat. If true, Signal would need to be dumped ASAP by everyone.

Less sensationally, there may be another Jeffrey Goldberg [or (JG) generic user icon] who Waltz meant to invite, perhaps someone with top secret clearance in an intel agency who wasn’t expected to weigh in, but was supposed to stay informed. J is the most common first initial in America, and G is in the top ten last initials: https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2011/01/14/two-letter-initials-which-are-the-most-common.html

there may be another Jeffrey Goldberg [or (JG) generic user icon] who Waltz meant to invite, perhaps someone with top secret clearance in an intel agency who wasn’t expected to weigh in, but was supposed to stay informed

Yeah, I think this is plausible. I recall seeing that there is, in fact, a reasonably-high-up intelligence official with initials JG who could perhaps have been an intended invitee, although I can't remember the name off my head. Even so, that's still a very stupid/sloppy mistake to make given the subject matter.

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