Credit: Melina Barris

WSPN’s Jeffery Zhang discusses the “Houthi PC small group” leaks.

In March, a behind-the-scenes Signal messaging group named “Houthi PC small group” – referring to a principals committee on the Yemen Houthi rebel threat – exposed highly sensitive U.S. military plans. The group chat’s messages encompassed precise operational details of a coordinated airstrike on Houthi targets in Yemen, including target locations, weapons payloads and timing of strikes, potentially endangering American troops and putting on display the incompetence of the country’s highest national security officials.

The chat contained 17 top Trump administration national security officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Direction of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Vice President J.D. Vance – and accidentally, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, who published an extraordinarily detailed account of the content discussed in the group chat.

It seems beyond belief that such sensitive information could be leaked to the public, and honestly, it’s embarrassing.

Principals Committees (PCs), are among the most secretive sessions held in Washington, typically held in the White House Situation Room. There is never a situation in which using Signal, a free messaging app, is the best method of communication to discuss what is typically covered in a PC.

Sure, Signal advertises itself as being encrypted and safe. However, the reason why such important meetings should never take place on a messaging app like Signal is because of user error. We’ve all added the wrong person to a chat at some point, so it’s insane that our government’s officials are risking confidential military plans for the sake of convenience.

There is no reason for internal U.S. government deliberations to happen on a chat app. By conducting a PC through Signal, our officials completely and utterly ignored the long standing traditions of a standard PC committee meeting. Typically, PC committee meetings have very specific record-keeping associated with them, including agendas and documents that categorize conclusions. These formalities are done on purpose to ensure that the public can understand exactly what is going on. This time, however, our representatives circumvented that entire process.

The individuals involved in the group chat leak have an incredible amount of support around the clock, and could have easily communicated with each other in a much more protected way than through Signal. According to Ilan Goldenber, a top official with the group J Street, all of the involved officials have military aides, built-in SCIFS in their homes and people who can get them secure communication wherever they are. It seems foolish and lazy to reject these resources and instead use a convenient yet much less secure way to communicate.

The Signal group chat leak was a major national security embarrassment for the Trump administration. The use of an insecure communication method that has been roundly criticized by experts showed stunning disregard for both cybersecurity standards and transparency rules. Experts have long warned that encryption alone isn’t a green light to discuss classified information. This fiasco needs to serve as a wake-up call. It’s time our officials stopped prioritizing convenience over the safety of the people.