Have you ever been in a chat and thought that if this gets leaked, it will cause a lot of trouble? Usually, you have to be careful what you say and what you put out, because if not, there could be someone looking through and saving everything you say that might be deemed distasteful or problematic. And if that person releases the chats, there are surely consequences.
This is just like something that has happened recently. An 18-year-old student at Florida International University was arrested because he talked about bombing places as a joke on Instagram (Maldonado and McAllister). Instagram flagged these comments, and they were reported.
Similarly, the U.S President Donald Trump and his National Security team were faced with backlash after a reporter from The Atlantic was added into a messaging group chat where they were discussing plans to attack the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen ((Read Messages Trump Officials Exchanged on Leaked Signal Thread). Ironically enough, it wasn’t just any other journalist, it was Jeffrey Goldberg; the editor in Chief of the Atlantic.
In this “classified” group chat, Goldberg reports that Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and more government officials discussed things such as information about the targets, the U.S weapons they would deploy, and attack sequencing (Copp et al.). Goldberg reports that the secretary of defense had texted the war plan at 11:44am. And more than 2 hours later, the plans they had made for the attack had come to life. The world found out shortly after 2pm eastern time on March 15th, confirming that this, as unbelievable as it is, was real life (Goldberg).
What should we as a country make out of this? Whether it was a mistake or not, something like that is a very big deal. Leaked government information is not something that people treat lightly. Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth had things to say about this situation. He said that Goldberg was “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist.” Hagseth told reporters that “Nobody was texting war plans, and thats all I have to say about that,” (Copp et al.).