Shane Leinhauser occasionally gets misdirected scam texts, mysterious messages of uncertain origin that prompt silence, or — at most — a confused, “Who’s this?”
But he’s never mistakenly been added to someone else’s group chat. And despite the strange messages Leinhauser does get, he says he’s not particularly concerned about his online safety.
“I don’t think of cybersecurity that often,” said Leinhauser, a junior biology and environmental science major. “I guess I just kind of assume it’s happening where it needs to happen.”
For United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and more than a dozen officials in the second Trump administration, “it” was apparently happening on a relatively famous commercial messaging app. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed in March that Hegseth had circulated detailed plans for airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi militia via a group text he was added to on Signal.
The revelations caused a sensation in Washington: Hearings with military advisors and spy chiefs, scheduled far in advance to discuss completely unrelated subjects, for days found themselves refocused on claims the Trump administration discusses government business through civilian channels — a longstanding no-no in the laws and rules governing the use of classified information. And the watchdog overseeing military officials and national secrets says it’s investigating Hegseth’s texting habits, specifically. It’s arguably the first incident in the new White House to hold the public’s attention for more than a day or two.
President Donald Trump hasn’t fired anyone in connection with what can only be called a breach. Even so, this particular incident boasts a moniker colored by the dust of 1972: “Signalgate.”
The first idea for this article was that someone, at some point, would say they weren’t sure what was wrong with sending battle plans on Signal. It’s end-to-end encrypted; hackers, in theory, can’t intercept and read messages sent on it. And, anyway, even the most sensitive texts sent there can be set to vanish into an unreadable mush after a few seconds. Then, a kindhearted expert in computer security would step in to enlighten this reporter, the breezy interlocutor — and the readers.
No one seemed to have much trouble figuring out the problem with Signal, in the eyes of national security experts. It’s a consumer-facing texting app. Anyone can download it at no charge, which means just about anyone can end up in any conversation involving anyone they know — accidentally, as in Golberg’s case, or otherwise.
Sealing communications from watchful eavesdroppers and overbearing marketers is one thing. Playing keep away from a hostile foreign militia with the capacity to wound and kill American troops — quite another. The former is perfectly suited to Signal. The latter, not so much.
“Governments would have to deal with a very different set of threats than everyday people,” said Chiu C. Tan, an associate professor of computer and information science. “That’s why the government has special phones they use, special laptops. Most of us would never bother.”
Militaries and national security officials don’t tend to rely on app-store offerings to protect their conversations. Instead, there’s a rigid set of rules and protocols designed to keep state secrets away from enemy eyes.
“It’s not simple,” said Vinodh Ganesan, the College of Science and Technology’s I.T. director and an instructor in a course that teaches the elements of encryption and cybersecurity. Transfers of classified information happen inside what’s known as a SCIF, he noted — a sensitive compartmented information facility.
“They still use technology behind the scenes, probably within the SCIF,” Ganesan added. “But there are all these things to prevent the leak of information.”
Philosopher Jordan Shapiro now teaches Intellectual Heritage and is in the gender, sexuality and women’s studies program. But he did some work with the military in his younger years, and he’s familiar with the setup Ganesan referred to: It often resembles a boxy metal tent. It shrouds an interior room of a high-level official’s home. And it’s where those officeholders are supposed to go whenever they need to send or receive sensitive information.
Leinhauser believes officials in the first Trump administration knew what they were doing — even if he didn’t agree with them.
This time?
“Now, not only are they making decisions that I disagree with, but it makes me think a lot of them are genuinely just really bad at their job,” Leinhauser said. “I feel like I don’t sound very smart when I say this, but it makes me think some of them are just kind of stupid.”
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