US DoD Security breach (split from What is DEI, and why is it dividing America?)

[toucana]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Anyway, riding a thin line between laughing and weeping at the sheer stupidity of it all, especially that Waltz fat-fingered Goldberg a Signal invite to the chat - which tips it towards laughing.  

Can you just imagine  if Waltz had fat-fingered a Signal invite to VP (Vice- President), and sent an invite to Vladimir Putin instead ?  - (Not that it would have made much difference - Putin would simply get to see the chat scroll about 2m earlier).

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Technically, it’s a mind virus 

I am confused, isn't the administration pro-virus?

1 hour ago, swansont said:

One of the senators chastised him for saying you can’t say this was unclassified but can’t reveal the content in the hearing - can’t have it both ways.

And Gabbard said something about war plans not being classified. LOl

A jeez, are they trying to use the flooding the zone strategy for every single thing now? They keep arguing contradictory things, even in court, like in the DOGE and deportation cases (no, DOGE is not an official agency and not run by Musk, but yes it is run by Musk, and it has full authority; no we cannot disclose details on the likely illegal deportations, and we cannot even say why this is a national security risk as even it is super top secret. Also here is a music video of the deportation).

 

 

[swansont]

38 minutes ago, CharonY said:

A jeez, are they trying to use the flooding the zone strategy for every single thing now? They keep arguing contradictory things, even in court, like in the DOGE and deportation cases (no, DOGE is not an official agency and not run by Musk, but yes it is run by Musk, and it has full authority; no we cannot disclose details on the likely illegal deportations, and we cannot even say why this is a national security risk as even it is super top secret. Also here is a music video of the deportation).

Tulsi said she couldn’t address a few points while the situation is under review, which I think translates as “can’t answer until we get together (on signal) and get our stories straight, and have time to also fudge the paperwork”

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

The CIA director claimed that the info is recorded per government rules, and using signal is allowed under that stipulation (I don’r\t know if that’s correct) but I don't think that applies to classified or CUI. (I say: let’s see the record. Now, before anyone fiddles with it)

One of the senators chastised him for saying you can’t say this was unclassified but can’t reveal the content in the hearing - can’t have it both ways.

And Gabbard said something about war plans not being classified. LOl

Another thing that I read is that Signal is not allowed to be run on government issued safe communication devices, suggesting that the communication happened with unsecured devices.

From the Atlantic article:

Quote

Several former U.S. officials told Harris and me that they had used Signal to share unclassified information and to discuss routine matters, particularly when traveling overseas without access to U.S. government systems. But they knew never to share classified or sensitive information on the app, because their phones could have been hacked by a foreign intelligence service, which would have been able to read the messages on the devices.

Elsewhere in the article, they noted that military activities should have been discussed in SCIFs or approved government equipment, as you noted.

 

Quote

If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said. Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.

 

[swansont]

In an interview, Goldberg said that the CIA director named a covert operative in the texts. So much for no classified info (not that anyone was buying that)

[MSC]

3 hours ago, toucana said:

Can you just imagine  if Waltz had fat-fingered a Signal invite to VP (Vice- President), and sent an invite to Vladimir Putin instead ?  - (Not that it would have made much difference - Putin would simply get to see the chat scroll about 2m earlier).

Funny you should say that; guess who the US envoy to the Middle East was with, at the exact same time the chat was opened...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-envoy-steve-witkoff-signal-text-group-chat-russia-putin/

Apparently Witkoff was in a meeting with Putin for about an hour and a half after the signal chat was started. 

Oh just saw your post about this on the previous page, sorry I missed that. 

A thought occurs to me though; let's say I had some sensitive messages or information or data to share with someone, that in public I am not meant to share any of that kind of information with. Lots of eyes on me etc, maybe the messages are from Trump to Putin and I want him to get those messages. Maybe I'm an envoy able to travel to Russia with an unsecure phone, a honey pot hackers dead drop. 

[toucana]

Susan Rice who was the 23rd U.S. national security advisor during the Obama era was interviewed on MSNBC tonight, and made the interesting point that two notable absentees from the list of participants in this Signal chat group were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the General in command of CENTCOM (United States Central Command) who is responsible for all U.S military operations in the Middle East.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7VoJJdXwW4

While this may well be because these soldiers were simply too professional to participate in a non-secure discussion on Signal, it raises the question of who is actually advising the CIC on military affairs if the JCS and CENTCOM were out of the loop ?

[CharonY]

15 minutes ago, toucana said:

While this may well be because these soldiers were simply too professional to participate in a non-secure discussion on Signal, it raises the question of who is actually advising the CIC on military affairs if the JCS and CENTCOM were out of the loop ?

Interesting question. Was Dr. Phil in the chat?

[iNow]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

In an interview, Goldberg said that the CIA director named a covert operative in the texts.

It was in his article, too.

When NSA chief Mike Waltz initiated the thread with the other Principals, he asked for each of them to reply with the name a primary point of contact from their offices to help with coordination during the operation.

They all named their primary point person, including (among others like the VP and DNI and SecDef) also John Radcliffe who is the current head of the CIA under Trump and he named this particular covert operative as his point of contact in response. 

Doesn’t make it better and not defending it just adding context. 

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

They all named their primary point person, including (among others like the VP and DNI and SecDef) also John Radcliffe who is the current head of the CIA under Trump and he named this particular covert operative as his point of contact in response. 

I read in another report that Ratcliffe said that the operative was not covert (but who knows whether that is true). I am also wondering, since they declared that nothing sensitive was discussed, is the journalist now free to publish the whole conversation?

[MSC]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

is the journalist now free to publish the whole conversation?

I'd be really interested to see that, cryptography is a part time hobby, however I don't think we can rule out the possibility of misdirection either. 

I personally still find it very suspicious that they included a journalist in the chat and I've now seen a few different explanations as to why, and the name given isn't consistently the same. Sounds like the "condoms for the Taliban" Chinese whisper thing again that they did with lying to people about what USAID does. 

Starting to suspect something a little more sinister at work in this "flood the zone" strategy and one which helps explain why Trump retains base support. Put simply, with all the different lies and spins etc, Trump doesn't just have a megaphone, but a customisable one. Fake news writers can make Trump look like a lot of different things through a lot of different people's electronic windows. 

Now, I know we keep saying this is an incompetently driven thing, but maybe we need to realize they are playing an entirely different game, with different rules. All we have to go on, when thinking about who these people are, and I'm not even talking about AHOTUS (Yes I liked that one) I'm talking about the people behind project 2025 and whatever psychopaths Trump can get into whatever positions of authority he can. Like a lot of rotten eggs in a basket making one great stinking basket. All we have to go on, is what they do openly, which is pretty bad.... What do they do in the shadows? 

Oh God, now I sound like those conspiracy Wacko's. Seriously though, is anyone familiar with Emperor Claudius? Are we being punked right now?

[exchemist]

5 hours ago, MSC said:

I'd be really interested to see that, cryptography is a part time hobby, however I don't think we can rule out the possibility of misdirection either. 

I personally still find it very suspicious that they included a journalist in the chat and I've now seen a few different explanations as to why, and the name given isn't consistently the same. Sounds like the "condoms for the Taliban" Chinese whisper thing again that they did with lying to people about what USAID does. 

Starting to suspect something a little more sinister at work in this "flood the zone" strategy and one which helps explain why Trump retains base support. Put simply, with all the different lies and spins etc, Trump doesn't just have a megaphone, but a customisable one. Fake news writers can make Trump look like a lot of different things through a lot of different people's electronic windows. 

Now, I know we keep saying this is an incompetently driven thing, but maybe we need to realize they are playing an entirely different game, with different rules. All we have to go on, when thinking about who these people are, and I'm not even talking about AHOTUS (Yes I liked that one) I'm talking about the people behind project 2025 and whatever psychopaths Trump can get into whatever positions of authority he can. Like a lot of rotten eggs in a basket making one great stinking basket. All we have to go on, is what they do openly, which is pretty bad.... What do they do in the shadows? 

Oh God, now I sound like those conspiracy Wacko's. Seriously though, is anyone familiar with Emperor Claudius? Are we being punked right now?

You may be overthinking this a bit. I sympathise, but that's what "flooding the zone with shit" is intended to do to people, so that they have no idea what to make of anything and give up trying to follow it all. The Kremlin does this. 

I think it went like this. Consider: this bunch of goons has the mindset that all the systems and procedures they have inherited are the cumbersome, bureaucratic and needlessly costly products of a bloated civil service. Consequently, seeing themselves as breath-of-fresh-air iconoclasts, I suspect they thought this is all balls, there are perfectly good commercial encrypted messaging services, so why bother with rules that say we have to use this state-developed[boo hiss] secret squirrel system, we'll just use Signal from now on.  And so they did........ BOOM!! 😁 

I was very much amused by Waltz preposterously suggesting that Goldberg had deliberately got his phone number into Waltz's address book (how?) and saying he would have to "consult Elon" about how to stop this happening again. What cock! The solution is, er.............to use the special secure system that already exists and whose use is, er,  in fact mandated by the current regulations they saw fit to ignore. 

Waltz's performance put me in mind of particularly unconvincing schoolboy with the feeblest of "dog ate my homework" excuses. 

Mind you, I think Goldberg might want to make sure his tax affairs are in good shape and that he doesn't get so much as a speeding fine for the next few months. These people now control everything and are extremely vindictive, with the object of scaring everyone into not probing what they are up to. 

Edited Wednesday at 11:03 AM by exchemist

[toucana]

5 hours ago, MSC said:

Oh God, now I sound like those conspiracy Wacko's. Seriously though, is anyone familiar with Emperor Claudius? Are we being punked right now?

To recap - It is just over a week since the Pentagon issued an agency-wide email advisory on March 18th warning all staff that Signal was a potentially insecure communication platform, and should not be used, even for communicating *unclassified* information.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability

According to this NPR article, their concerns related to known phishing attacks by professional Russian hacking groups embedding malicious QR codes into spoofed webpages or group chat invites which exploit the ‘Link Device’ mechanism (also found in WhatsApp).

It is just 5 days since the New York Times reported that Pete Hegseth had arranged for Elon Musk to attend a top-secret Pentagon ‘O-Plan’ briefing about a potential war with China last Friday 20th March.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/musk-pentagon-briefing-china-war-plan.html

The furore aroused by the impropriety of inviting a private businessman with extensive financial exposure to pressure from China to such a sensitive meeting then forced the White House into walking back these plans, and denying that Musk’s visit to the Pentagon had been about anything other than discussing ‘efficiencies’.

The Roman Emperor Claudius (AD 41- 54) who suffered from a limp, deafness and a stutter only became Emperor because he was the last surviving adult male of the Julio-Claudian family, once the Praetorian guard had slaughtered his predecessor Caligula and his family. Claudius was a scholar and antiquarian who had been tutored by the historian Livy as a child, and was the last known Roman of high status who could read and speak Etruscan - he actually wrote a long-lost complete grammar of Etruscan - something modern scholars would sell their souls for. He turned out to be a competent ruler and adminstrator of the Roman empire until his demise in AD 54, when he was allegedly poisoned by his wife Agrippina the Younger with toxic mushrooms.

[exchemist]

Goldberg has published the transcript in The Atlantic, hahaha. They had it coming, after trying to trash the guy. Watch them wriggle😁.

[MSC]

3 hours ago, toucana said:

The Roman Emperor Claudius (AD 41- 54) who suffered from a limp, deafness and a stutter only became Emperor because he was the last surviving adult male of the Julio-Claudian family, once the Praetorian guard had slaughtered his predecessor Caligula and his family. Claudius was a scholar and antiquarian who had been tutored by the historian Livy as a child, and was the last known Roman of high status who could read and speak Etruscan - he actually wrote a long-lost complete grammar of Etruscan - something modern scholars would sell their souls for. He turned out to be a competent ruler and adminstrator of the Roman empire until his demise in AD 54, when he was allegedly poisoned by his wife Agrippina the Younger with toxic mushrooms.

Excellent! Now do you know why, he was the last surviving male heir?

2 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Goldberg has published the transcript in The Atlantic, hahaha. They had it coming, after trying to trash the guy. Watch them wriggle😁.

Perfect!

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

You may be overthinking this a bit. I sympathise, but that's what "flooding the zone with shit" is intended to do to people, so that they have no idea what to make of anything and give up trying to follow it all. The Kremlin does this. 

I don't know that I am overthinking it, that's not even to say I think I am absolutely right, but amongst "flooding the zone with shit" there are obviously going to be more behind the scenes plans going on. These folks are literally conspiring to establish a de facto dictatorship with the intention of making it de jure. We need to remember there are a lot of different factions within MAGA not all with the same intentions, motivations or MOs.

Another reason to examine my conspiracy hypothesis, is to examine a question; Should the response to Trump be to also "flood the zone"? Take what I said as an example, would it be immoral to flood the zone with counter-propaganda, conspiracy theories all with a theme that 47 and the Republican party are hurting and manipulating people through a series of entertaining narratives where speculation is allowed to run wild? Is there value in that? I don't know, just a thought. 

 

[TheVat]

15 minutes ago, MSC said:

Excellent! Now do you know why, he was the last surviving male heir?

Have heard a plethora of theories on the low fertility rate in the Roman ruling families, from lead pipes (overstated, I suspect) to extremely hot Roman baths reducing sperm counts.  I've wondered if it was just the males spending too much time with concubines and vino, pretty much out of ammo by the time they got home.  

[MSC]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Have heard a plethora of theories on the low fertility rate in the Roman ruling families, from lead pipes (overstated, I suspect) to extremely hot Roman baths reducing sperm counts.  I've wondered if it was just the males spending too much time with concubines and vino, pretty much out of ammo by the time they got home.  

I was asking about why Claudius specifically survived. Because Agrippina the Elder, Tiberius and Caligula did not see him as a threat, so he survived many purges and was overlooked as a potential assassination target. His disabilities made everyone underestimate him and at times he definitely played them up and acted the simpleton. So my suggestion is that we stop assuming incompetence drives every decision and move the MAGA movement makes.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

Excellent! Now do you know why, he was the last surviving male heir?

Wasn't Nero the last known male descendant?

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Have heard a plethora of theories on the low fertility rate in the Roman ruling families, from lead pipes (overstated, I suspect) to extremely hot Roman baths reducing sperm counts.  I've wondered if it was just the males spending too much time with concubines and vino, pretty much out of ammo by the time they got home.  

I am not particularly sure whether that explanation is necessary. Child death was high, maybe half of all children reached adulthood. And murdering was quite frequent in the Imperial lineage.

[MSC]

10 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Wasn't Nero the last known male descendant?

Yes he was the adopted son and a few other family relations to Claudius. It would be more accurate to say that Claudius was the only surviving male heir capable of assuming power at the time. Nero would have been four when Claudius became emperor. 

Edited Wednesday at 05:06 PM by MSC

[CharonY]

34 minutes ago, MSC said:

I was asking about why Claudius specifically survived. Because Agrippina the Elder, Tiberius and Caligula did not see him as a threat, so he survived many purges and was overlooked as a potential assassination target. His disabilities made everyone underestimate him and at times he definitely played them up and acted the simpleton. So my suggestion is that we stop assuming incompetence drives every decision and move the MAGA movement makes.

Oh you were referring to just Claudius' family, that could be the case, as in contrast to his other male relatives he was not involved in public office (or rather, excluded from it). I am not sure whether it is fair to state that he acted up on it. He also wrote history books, which according to wikipedia might have caused some anger, too.

But I think that you are in fact overthinking the MAGA movement. Part of it is planned for sure, there have a book on it. But the execution is not some hidden masterstroke. It is done with incompetence and relies on the fact that people have fractured realities. Even 20 years ago it wouldn't have worked because the public outrage would have been overwhelming.

It is both: planned and incompetent.

[toucana]

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Goldberg has published the transcript in The Atlantic, hahaha. They had it coming, after trying to trash the guy. Watch them wriggle😁.

And it is a gem. You can find a copy of the transcript here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1jkbt98/here_is_the_entire_transcript_of_messages_from/?rdt=56443

Note the screenshot page attached below entitled —>  'Pete Hesgeth - TEAM UPDATE'.

This message which has a TIME NOW stamp of 11:44 ET provides a detailed predictive account of the upcoming attack windows, multiple launch phases and weapons packages that will be used over the next four hour period starting from 12:15 ET - i.e it is describing military operations in the near future which have not yet taken place -operations which happen to include the carefully targeted assassination of one particular Yemeni militant.

In one sense Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hesgeth were quite correct in telling Congress that this was not classified information  - no Siree ! This was *highly* classified information that shouldn’t have been within a country mile of a drunken frat-boys chat party, and an undetected journalist on an insecure platform like Signal.

 

[exchemist]

Slightly tangentially to the above, I remain a bit puzzled why Vance was getting so hot under the collar at the thought the USA was fighting Europe's war for them with these attacks on the Houthis. I gather there was even discussion about making Europe pay for the operation. But so far as I am aware, there is no suggestion that anyone in Europe asked for these attacks to be carried out. On the contrary, it seems to have been entirely an American initiative - possibly as a way to signal (haha) willingness to fight a proxy war with Iran.

So on what basis would Europe pay for an action they never requested and which might actually blow back to hurt their interests?  I can't follow the logic. Is there some background to this that I am missing, or is it just the fascist vein in Vance's neck throbbing again?  

[MSC]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

But I think that you are in fact overthinking the MAGA movement

You don't find it suspicious that a journalist was included in the chat and this just happened to be a mistake? 

It's less that I am overestimating the movement but not underestimating the ability of individuals and groups within said movement, they can figure out ways of taking advantage of the fractured state of news media consumption sources. 

4 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Slightly tangentially to the above, I remain a bit puzzled why Vance was getting so hot under the collar at the thought the USA was fighting Europe's war for them with these attacks on the Houthis. I gather there was even discussion about making Europe pay for the operation. But so far as I am aware, there is no suggestion that anyone in Europe asked for these attacks to be carried out. On the contrary, it seems to have been entirely an American initiative - possibly as a way to signal (haha) willingness to fight a proxy war with Iran.

So on what basis would Europe pay for an action they never requested and which might actually blow back to hurt their interests?  I can't follow the logic. Is there some background to this that I am missing, or is it just the fascist vein in Vance's neck throbbing again?  

Now that's something that is definitely incompetence and idiocy driven. 

[iNow]

28 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I remain a bit puzzled why Vance was getting so hot under the collar at the thought the USA was fighting Europe's war for them with these attacks on the Houthis. <…> I can't follow the logic. Is there some background to this that I am missing

Optics, specifically with internal polling and politics directly inside the US.

From what I can tell, he was primarily concerned that their MAGA base wouldn’t support the action (any action) in a foreign country and that it would divide an otherwise compliant and unified group of zombie sycophants. He was mostly proposing a delay of a month to whip support and deploy a narrative across the right wing media ecosystem that would get his voters on board THEN launch. 

[exchemist]

1 minute ago, iNow said:

Optics, specifically with internal polling and politics directly inside the US.

From what I can tell, he was primarily concerned that their MAGA base wouldn’t support the action (any action) in a foreign country and that it would divide an otherwise compliant and unified group of zombie sycophants. He was mostly proposing a delay of a month to whip support and deploy a narrative across the right wing media ecosystem that would get his voters on board THEN launch. 

You may be right but then why drag Europe into the logic? And why this talk of making Europe pay for it?  

Just seen a headline saying the CIA director has stated Hegseth was not drunk when he ordered the airstrikes. 

This gets funnier and funnier. 🐐🎪