There are moments in American political life that transcend partisanship, moments that demand a collective voice; not left or right, but American, raised in outrage, disbelief, and demand for accountability. What many are now calling “Signal-gate” is one of those moments.
In the long history of American military and intelligence operations, breaches of security have typically come through espionage, rogue actors, or foreign infiltration. They have not come from the highest levels of the executive branch casually circumventing protocol through a group chat. From the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the alleged mishandling of classified information in email servers, the United States has endured serious debates over transparency, secrecy, and national security.
But never has a sitting administration’s senior leadership been caught coordinating active war planning on a consumer-grade messaging app, in real time, with operational details and live strike coordination exposed, accidentally, to a journalist. This incident is not just unprecedented in its recklessness; it stands alone in modern American history.
That members of the Trump administration—operatives entrusted with some of the most sensitive national security decisions—used the Signal app to coordinate an imminent military strike in Yemen is not just a lapse in judgment. It is a national security breach of staggering proportions. It is a betrayal of the norms, protocols, and legal boundaries that exist precisely to protect the lives of American troops and preserve the legitimacy of our foreign policy. And every American who values our country’s security should be alarmed.
Signal is a secure messaging app by civilian standards—but it is not a secure military communications platform. It’s built for everyday users, not for Cabinet secretaries gaming out missile strikes. The United States military has hardened networks, air-gapped systems, and classified protocols for this very reason: because war is serious, and so is operational security.
This isn’t hypothetical. In March, as tensions in the Middle East escalated, a Signal group chat was created by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. In that chat were Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. These officials, some of the most senior national security voices in the country, used this private, consumer-grade app to discuss and coordinate a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen.
The situation quickly spiraled from reckless to farcical when Waltz, in an apparent mis click, mistakenly added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to the group chat. Goldberg, stunned to find himself inside what appeared to be a live planning session for a U.S. military operation, later confirmed the chat included conversations about specific airstrike timing, targets, and weaponry. Secretary Hegseth was particularly direct, sharing the sequencing of strikes, the nature of the ordnance to be used, and tactical considerations regarding follow-up intelligence assessments. This wasn’t theoretical chatter, this was live war planning, conducted over a phone app designed for encrypted small talk, not national defense.
Let that sink in: the people in charge of American war policy were so cavalier with operational security that they not only used a consumer app for sensitive discussions, but also accidentally added a member of the press to the war room.
There’s no plausible justification for this. This wasn’t a situation where secure systems were down, or time was too short for protocol. This was a matter of convenience. They chose Signal because it was fast, private, and off-the-books—exactly the kind of shadow channel that federal law is meant to prevent. Under the Espionage Act, it is a crime to transmit national defense information to unauthorized persons, willfully or through gross negligence. The Federal Records Act and Presidential Records Act both mandate that official communications, particularly those involving national security decisions, must be preserved, not deleted, auto-encrypted, and conveniently forgotten. Signal’s disappearing messages feature is essentially designed to evade those safeguards.
This matters for reasons that go well beyond legality. Sharing operational plans in unsecured formats introduces very real, life-threatening risks. If any one of the participants’ phones had been compromised, whether by foreign spyware, malware, or a compromised network, those details could have been relayed in real-time to adversaries.
Houthi forces, had they been tipped off, could have repositioned mobile missile units, set up ambushes, or staged anti-air defenses in the path of U.S. pilots. And it's not just aircrews at risk. Intelligence officers, regional allies, and ground logistics teams operating in or near the target zone would also have been endangered by any leak or interception.
Did the participants recognize the gravity of this breach? No, the officials involved have defaulted to the usual playbook of denial and deflection. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, when confronted with the incident, dismissed the controversy outright, saying, “Nobody was texting war plans,” despite firsthand reporting and screenshots from the Signal thread that show otherwise. Not a single member of the group has taken public responsibility. No one has resigned. No one has even acknowledged the breach with the seriousness it warrants.
This is more than a communications error. It’s a symptom of a dangerous culture that treats national security like an accessory to political gamesmanship. Every pilot who flew that mission did so trusting that their movements were coordinated through secure, lawful channels. Every intelligence analyst and allied liaison operating in tandem assumed the information they were working from had been handled with care. That trust was violated. And that violation cannot go unanswered.
What we’re witnessing is not just a mistake but the erosion of accountability at the highest levels. If the vice president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security advisor, and the DNI can all coordinate a strike through private messages, leak that conversation to a reporter through negligence, and then walk away without consequence, what precedent are we setting for future administrations? Are secure channels now optional? Are federal records requirements merely symbolic?
The danger here isn’t just what happened in this instance. It’s what will happen next, if we don’t confront this failure head-on. We’re no longer talking about breaking norms. We’re talking about undermining the legal and procedural infrastructure that keeps our military personnel safe and our foreign policy coherent. If that structure collapses under the weight of arrogance, we will all pay the price.
Signal-gate must not be allowed to fade into the noise of a political cycle. It was a dereliction of duty, a disgrace to the uniformed men and women whose lives depend on the very security these officials undermined. And if we as citizens can’t summon outrage over that, we have surrendered something essential. We will have given up not just our national security, but our ability to govern ourselves.
The Trump administration just wants this to go away. Trump seems unconcerned. Instead of the deserved reprimands, he is heaping praise on those who participated in this dangerous breach of protocol. We should expect much more of those we have entrusted as leaders. I don't hold out much hope we will get it.
Disclaimer: Jim Powers writes Opinion columns. The views expressed in this editorial are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Polk County Publishing or its affiliates. In the interest of transparency, I am politically Left Libertarian.
