Or should that be “ruining”?
The Signal chat security leak was remarkable in a number of ways.
Firstly, I cannot believe that the US government permits a commercial chat program to be used to plan military missions. I worked for IBM for many years, the last 15 of them at home. I connected to their mainframes using an encrypted VPN on a company supplied laptop. Personal laptops were not permitted to access the mainframes. Non-authorized programs could not be installed on the IBM supplied laptop. Unlike a VPN you buy for your home computer, where data decryption occurs at the VPN vendor’s server, my work VPN had end-to-end encryption. Any group messaging had to use an internal secure messaging program. And I was not planning the dropping of bombs on anyone.
To be fair, Signal does have end-to-end encryption.
Secondly, the people attending the Signal chat exhibited a degree of incompetence that would make the Dormouse and March Hare planning the Mad Hatter’s tea party look good. Did no one think to check who was in the chat? And these people are planning the dropping of bombs?
Thirdly, the preposterous spin and lies being tossed about in an attempt to make all this go away are so transparently stupid that only the stupid could possibly give them any credence.
Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy has a selection of comic characters that eerily echo the current occupants of the White House. While equally comic, I fear the real thing is more sinister. I strongly suspect that, rather like the hapless Apthorpe in Waugh’s trilogy, Mike Waltz has an unnatural attachment to a Thunder-Box stored in his attic.
Speaking of the journalist inadvertently invited to the chat, Waltz claims “I didn’t see this loser in the group”. In TrumpWorld there are only winners and losers.
As I write this, I see that Waltz has taken responsibility for this mess and, presumably, has joined the losers.
An ancient Turkish proverb says:
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a sultan.
The palace becomes a circus.
[ stephenhicks.org ]
…unless his name is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who used to be a comedy actor….
What can I say? Is the world under the founder of Trumpism getting any better and safer? Chaos! Danger! Many more will suffer in today’s world….
The mission was a success – unlike Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left over a dozen dead, $80 billion in weaponry handed to the enemy and got arguably less pushback.
Heck, your shiny new administration has four whole years to botch all kinds of things. And I don’t doubt they will.
I can tell you from experience that the sobering reality is that politicians everywhere are prone to this sort of thing – though admittedly it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch than the current US administration.
“All those closed, classified intranets are just so tedious to use! Let’s just get together on WhatsApp instead. No one will know but us!“
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