48 ms·

Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat

186 points by n1b0m 2y ago

alistairSH 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
NoWordsKotoba 2y ago
[flagged]
- morkalork 2y ago
  [flagged]
- matwood 2y ago
  Those watching and reading Fox News who will likely completely the ignore the story.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Or they will spin it. The Democrats and othe Trump opponents have no power to communicate effectively outside their bubble, and Trump's team, the Republicans and the right wing know it. They can do anything and spin it successfully. It is the heart of their power.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- threatofrain 2y ago
  Arguably 45% of the US by job approval.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > who outside the most delusional among us is not questioning the unfittedness of the entire Trump administration? I once saw the fall of great civilisations as tragedies. They’re not. After a certain point, after a certain generation, they’re not just inevitable. They’re deserved. The American model of government and society may empirically not work. Hell, universal suffrage and electoral democracy may not be the fittest way to organise humanity. I hope not. I don’t believe so, yet. But the evidence is mounting. Since the Industrial Revolution, the tendrils of fascism have tried at democracy (an institution broader than just elections) borne from the agricultural revolution. Fascism isn’t the answer. But maybe popular will is, similarly, a bad—if predictable—governing instrument. China is making the quiet argument America made in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. American history just doesn’t teach the consequences of O.G. Versailles.
- sam_goody 2y ago
  I am convinced that I do not have enough data to be able to assess the "fittedness" of the entire Trump administration". And that is despite (or perhaps because) I have spent way way to much time reading articles both from the Left and the Right. If you only read one narrative, you might think you are getting the whole picture. When you read both [which is admittedly difficult - I sometimes blanch and force myself to read just to get the options open], you might find that there are hints how much is not known. When you have a reason to be involved at some point, you realize that Gell-Mann was on to something
  - scarecrowbob 2y ago
    I'd be quite interested if you could point me to some sources who are making what you believe is a credible case that the Trump admin is executing some coherent strategy in a competent manner. I read quite lot, everyone from anarchists an d communists to people I believe would happily describe themselves as fascists. I read self-described US liberals and conservatives. And I am having a very hard time finding folks who describe a reasoned, coherent strategy being implemented. I have read a lot of (typically US "right wing") commentators who claim that "we just can't know", but having come of age when the same disingenuous claim was made about the US invasion of Iraq it is hard for me to take those kinds of claims seriously. I'm not looking for an account that I can agree with, but even a simple "this is their strategy, and here is an account of why that is a coherent idea" would be a big upgrade from what I am usually hearing; my current understanding is that only God and Trump understood the big picture and that Trump is senile enough that even he has lost the plot.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hdivider 2y ago
Consider all the small business defense contractors who are held to the letter of the most minute security compliance requirements. They have to somehow meet everything, with very limited resources. And then at the top of government, the most sensitive information is frequently handled without any care at all. Not to mention 19-year olds with flash drives barging into the most sensitive IT systems of the federal government. Slight imbalance there, I would say.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Notice why Hesgeth's aids were fired: > According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information. I understand the tactics of much of what Trump and his people do, even though I often disagree. I understand why Trump has DOGE moving quickly and breaking things; I understand why they show contempt for the law, rules, and customs - they want to destroy those things. I don't understand the utter incompetence that often appears; an earlier example was team Trump's court filings challenging the 2020 elections but there is lots more. How does that furthering the neo-fascist / conservative / Trump mission? I suppose it's disruptive but if they just showed basic competence they would probably get away with much more.
  - bayarearefugee 2y ago
    When the only qualification you have for the people that you hire to advise you is absolute sycophantic loyalty, it isn't surprising when they turn out to be wildly incompetent.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Hesgeth has significant success in life and served as a captain in the Army (or Army National Guard). Those aren't sufficient qualification for Secretary of Defense, but they are for not doing stupid, self-sabotaging stuff. Simlarly, Rudy Guliani was a lawyer and mayor, but the 2020 election court filings and arguments were idiotic. How is that possible? I don't buy that they are idiots. I don't have an explanation, however.
morkalork 2y ago
I remember in the one UX design class I took how they stressed the apocryphal "your grandmother is using this app" which in hindsight is sadly asking too much, apparently the bar should have been lower at "the secretary of defense is trying to start a group chat and not leak national security secrets".
- mcphage 2y ago
  He’s not really trying not to leak secrets, though.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Not trying at all ... US defense secretary texted strike information to his family in group chat he created from sources common to both The Guardian article and the parallel New York Times article.
ty6853 2y ago
[flagged]
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  > I'd point out it is a victimless crime is it though? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/why-trump-administration-used-signal-hegseth-gabbard https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/why-tr... > as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. not american, but wouldn't the victims in this case be 'every american'? i suppose it depends on whether you think PRA/FoIA et al. are important in holding governments to account or not.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Experts say it risks the lives of the pilots. Also, if Hesgeth and other officials are doing it with this particular information, we might be concerned they are doing it with other information.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    One of the most famous recorded surface-to-air missile kills on a stealth aircraft was enabled by spies reporting formations and timing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani Yugoslav spies residing near Italian NATO airbases informed the Yugoslav Air Defense HQ about lack of EA-6 Prowler electronic jammer and "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM aircraft launches during the late evening.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Interesting! Unfortunately, Wikipedia offers no citations for that story. (Also, I don't think it says anything about timing, only formation in the sense of what aircraft and capabilities were flying.)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lemon_zest 2y ago
It kinda gets buried under the utter incompetence of these clowns but why are we even bombing Yemen? How is it acceptable to brazenly destroying other countries’ civil infrastructure? It’s a US president’s pastime activity since Obama
- ty6853 2y ago
  Obama started doing it as a concession to the Saudis for our policies in the ME. More recently Yemen has pirated ships as an immediate response to our support and funding of mass murder of civilians in Palestine. So the Yemenis are not blameless and there is some sort of valid reasoning for the attacks, but to be clear we are the instigator here.
  - lemon_zest 2y ago
    Agreed, mine was more of a rhetorical question. The concession was that we allowed the Saudis to bomb them and further excarcerbate the civil war in Yemen. Now because they are blockading shipments in protest of the current onslaught in Gaza we are pummeling them for it. We sure do have a taste for war crimes in the region.
    - Balgair 2y ago
      The other issue is that these bombing will accomplish nothing of value. These rebels have been bombed to the stone age by Saudi already. The cost of the sorties is vastly larger than anything the rebels are sending. Yes, some 'show the colors' is needed to assuage allies and merchants. It ends up being very expensive 'grass cutting'. But real change there is going to require boots on the ground. And none of the players in the region want that. So, we just spend a $80,000 on a missile for a guy to shoot that doesn't make that in a year at a guy that doesn't make that in a lifetime.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > real change there is going to require boots on the ground Or bombing their sponsors. I’m not an advocate of war with Iran. But it makes more sense than blowing up desert mountains.
leereeves 2y ago
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned that the government's cyber security agency CISA recommends the use of Signal, as of December 2024: > Apply these best practices to your devices and online accounts. > 1. Use only end-to-end encrypted communications. > Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps. https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mobile-communications-best-practices.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
- defrost 2y ago
  The concern is less about Signal, more about inviting journalists and immediate civilian family to a front row as it happens discussion about upcoming targets. That and the deliberate lack of record keeping. Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages to coordinate military strikes last month in Yemen allege that new court filings by the government reveal a “calculated strategy” by Trump administration officials to evade transparency laws through the illegal destruction of government records. The use of the private group chat—in which some messages were configured to automatically delete before they could be archived—was first revealed by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on March 24, after he was inadvertently added to the group by Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz. American Oversight subsequently filed Freedom of Information Act requests over the chats and then sought a temporary restraining order in a Washington, DC, federal court in an effort to compel the government to salvage any messages yet to be deleted. ~ https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-happened-to-those-signalgate-messages/ https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-happened-to-those-sig...
  - leereeves 2y ago
    Hegseth has invited his wife and brother to other official meetings in person. He seems to be including them as part of his team; inviting them to the Signal chat probably wasn't a mistake. > That and the deliberate lack of record keeping. That part seems like speculation. How would we even know if records were kept? If records were kept, they'd be classified. > Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages That seems very much like the concern is about the use of Signal, so the fact that CISA recommends it is very relevant.
belter 2y ago
Oh look it's flagged...this is HN way of saying we are clean on OpsSec... :-)
- ZeroTalent 2y ago
  OopsSec
- dang 2y ago
  If you keep using HN primarily for political battle, we're going to have to ban you. We've already asked you to stop, and you've continued to do a ton of it. If you want to keep posting to HN, please fix this properly. Also, please stop posting snarky and/or unsubstantive comments (like this one). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - belter 2y ago
    > If you keep using HN primarily for political battle Please clarify what you mean by this. Are you saying some HN users should abstain to comment on some threads?
    - dang 2y ago
      https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
josefritzishere 2y ago
This guy would be fired at any bluechip company in America for leaking internal coms this way.
xnx 2y ago
Staying optimistic: "Exclusive: The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary" https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-house-pete-hegseth-defense-department https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-hou...
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Deserved. Nice if true. But the article says the White House denies it. Make of that what you will...
  - belter 2y ago
    This is how secure information need to be treated...acording to Pete: https://youtu.be/iV8-a1yUGNo?t=319 https://youtu.be/iV8-a1yUGNo?t=319
thunky 2y ago
Fully expect some new bonehead executive orders to distract us from this.

186 points by n1b0m 2y ago

alistairSH 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

NoWordsKotoba 2y ago

[flagged]

morkalork 2y ago
[flagged]
matwood 2y ago
Those watching and reading Fox News who will likely completely the ignore the story.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Or they will spin it. The Democrats and othe Trump opponents have no power to communicate effectively outside their bubble, and Trump's team, the Republicans and the right wing know it. They can do anything and spin it successfully. It is the heart of their power.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
threatofrain 2y ago
Arguably 45% of the US by job approval.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> who outside the most delusional among us is not questioning the unfittedness of the entire Trump administration? I once saw the fall of great civilisations as tragedies. They’re not. After a certain point, after a certain generation, they’re not just inevitable. They’re deserved. The American model of government and society may empirically not work. Hell, universal suffrage and electoral democracy may not be the fittest way to organise humanity. I hope not. I don’t believe so, yet. But the evidence is mounting. Since the Industrial Revolution, the tendrils of fascism have tried at democracy (an institution broader than just elections) borne from the agricultural revolution. Fascism isn’t the answer. But maybe popular will is, similarly, a bad—if predictable—governing instrument. China is making the quiet argument America made in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. American history just doesn’t teach the consequences of O.G. Versailles.
sam_goody 2y ago
I am convinced that I do not have enough data to be able to assess the "fittedness" of the entire Trump administration". And that is despite (or perhaps because) I have spent way way to much time reading articles both from the Left and the Right. If you only read one narrative, you might think you are getting the whole picture. When you read both [which is admittedly difficult - I sometimes blanch and force myself to read just to get the options open], you might find that there are hints how much is not known. When you have a reason to be involved at some point, you realize that Gell-Mann was on to something
- scarecrowbob 2y ago
  I'd be quite interested if you could point me to some sources who are making what you believe is a credible case that the Trump admin is executing some coherent strategy in a competent manner. I read quite lot, everyone from anarchists an d communists to people I believe would happily describe themselves as fascists. I read self-described US liberals and conservatives. And I am having a very hard time finding folks who describe a reasoned, coherent strategy being implemented. I have read a lot of (typically US "right wing") commentators who claim that "we just can't know", but having come of age when the same disingenuous claim was made about the US invasion of Iraq it is hard for me to take those kinds of claims seriously. I'm not looking for an account that I can agree with, but even a simple "this is their strategy, and here is an account of why that is a coherent idea" would be a big upgrade from what I am usually hearing; my current understanding is that only God and Trump understood the big picture and that Trump is senile enough that even he has lost the plot.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hdivider 2y ago

Consider all the small business defense contractors who are held to the letter of the most minute security compliance requirements. They have to somehow meet everything, with very limited resources. And then at the top of government, the most sensitive information is frequently handled without any care at all. Not to mention 19-year olds with flash drives barging into the most sensitive IT systems of the federal government. Slight imbalance there, I would say.

mmooss 2y ago
Notice why Hesgeth's aids were fired: > According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information. I understand the tactics of much of what Trump and his people do, even though I often disagree. I understand why Trump has DOGE moving quickly and breaking things; I understand why they show contempt for the law, rules, and customs - they want to destroy those things. I don't understand the utter incompetence that often appears; an earlier example was team Trump's court filings challenging the 2020 elections but there is lots more. How does that furthering the neo-fascist / conservative / Trump mission? I suppose it's disruptive but if they just showed basic competence they would probably get away with much more.
- bayarearefugee 2y ago
  When the only qualification you have for the people that you hire to advise you is absolute sycophantic loyalty, it isn't surprising when they turn out to be wildly incompetent.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Hesgeth has significant success in life and served as a captain in the Army (or Army National Guard). Those aren't sufficient qualification for Secretary of Defense, but they are for not doing stupid, self-sabotaging stuff. Simlarly, Rudy Guliani was a lawyer and mayor, but the 2020 election court filings and arguments were idiotic. How is that possible? I don't buy that they are idiots. I don't have an explanation, however.

morkalork 2y ago

I remember in the one UX design class I took how they stressed the apocryphal "your grandmother is using this app" which in hindsight is sadly asking too much, apparently the bar should have been lower at "the secretary of defense is trying to start a group chat and not leak national security secrets".

mcphage 2y ago
He’s not really trying not to leak secrets, though.
- defrost 2y ago
  Not trying at all ... US defense secretary texted strike information to his family in group chat he created from sources common to both The Guardian article and the parallel New York Times article.

ty6853 2y ago

[flagged]

dijksterhuis 2y ago
> I'd point out it is a victimless crime is it though? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/why-trump-administration-used-signal-hegseth-gabbard https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/why-tr... > as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. not american, but wouldn't the victims in this case be 'every american'? i suppose it depends on whether you think PRA/FoIA et al. are important in holding governments to account or not.
mmooss 2y ago
Experts say it risks the lives of the pilots. Also, if Hesgeth and other officials are doing it with this particular information, we might be concerned they are doing it with other information.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  One of the most famous recorded surface-to-air missile kills on a stealth aircraft was enabled by spies reporting formations and timing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani Yugoslav spies residing near Italian NATO airbases informed the Yugoslav Air Defense HQ about lack of EA-6 Prowler electronic jammer and "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM aircraft launches during the late evening.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Interesting! Unfortunately, Wikipedia offers no citations for that story. (Also, I don't think it says anything about timing, only formation in the sense of what aircraft and capabilities were flying.)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lemon_zest 2y ago

It kinda gets buried under the utter incompetence of these clowns but why are we even bombing Yemen? How is it acceptable to brazenly destroying other countries’ civil infrastructure? It’s a US president’s pastime activity since Obama

ty6853 2y ago
Obama started doing it as a concession to the Saudis for our policies in the ME. More recently Yemen has pirated ships as an immediate response to our support and funding of mass murder of civilians in Palestine. So the Yemenis are not blameless and there is some sort of valid reasoning for the attacks, but to be clear we are the instigator here.
- lemon_zest 2y ago
  Agreed, mine was more of a rhetorical question. The concession was that we allowed the Saudis to bomb them and further excarcerbate the civil war in Yemen. Now because they are blockading shipments in protest of the current onslaught in Gaza we are pummeling them for it. We sure do have a taste for war crimes in the region.
  - Balgair 2y ago
    The other issue is that these bombing will accomplish nothing of value. These rebels have been bombed to the stone age by Saudi already. The cost of the sorties is vastly larger than anything the rebels are sending. Yes, some 'show the colors' is needed to assuage allies and merchants. It ends up being very expensive 'grass cutting'. But real change there is going to require boots on the ground. And none of the players in the region want that. So, we just spend a $80,000 on a missile for a guy to shoot that doesn't make that in a year at a guy that doesn't make that in a lifetime.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > real change there is going to require boots on the ground Or bombing their sponsors. I’m not an advocate of war with Iran. But it makes more sense than blowing up desert mountains.

leereeves 2y ago

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned that the government's cyber security agency CISA recommends the use of Signal, as of December 2024: > Apply these best practices to your devices and online accounts. > 1. Use only end-to-end encrypted communications. > Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps. https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mobile-communications-best-practices.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...

defrost 2y ago
The concern is less about Signal, more about inviting journalists and immediate civilian family to a front row as it happens discussion about upcoming targets. That and the deliberate lack of record keeping. Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages to coordinate military strikes last month in Yemen allege that new court filings by the government reveal a “calculated strategy” by Trump administration officials to evade transparency laws through the illegal destruction of government records. The use of the private group chat—in which some messages were configured to automatically delete before they could be archived—was first revealed by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on March 24, after he was inadvertently added to the group by Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz. American Oversight subsequently filed Freedom of Information Act requests over the chats and then sought a temporary restraining order in a Washington, DC, federal court in an effort to compel the government to salvage any messages yet to be deleted. ~ https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-happened-to-those-signalgate-messages/ https://www.wired.com/story/heres-what-happened-to-those-sig...
- leereeves 2y ago
  Hegseth has invited his wife and brother to other official meetings in person. He seems to be including them as part of his team; inviting them to the Signal chat probably wasn't a mistake. > That and the deliberate lack of record keeping. That part seems like speculation. How would we even know if records were kept? If records were kept, they'd be classified. > Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages That seems very much like the concern is about the use of Signal, so the fact that CISA recommends it is very relevant.

belter 2y ago

Oh look it's flagged...this is HN way of saying we are clean on OpsSec... :-)

ZeroTalent 2y ago
OopsSec
dang 2y ago
If you keep using HN primarily for political battle, we're going to have to ban you. We've already asked you to stop, and you've continued to do a ton of it. If you want to keep posting to HN, please fix this properly. Also, please stop posting snarky and/or unsubstantive comments (like this one). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- belter 2y ago
  > If you keep using HN primarily for political battle Please clarify what you mean by this. Are you saying some HN users should abstain to comment on some threads?
  - dang 2y ago
    https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

josefritzishere 2y ago

This guy would be fired at any bluechip company in America for leaking internal coms this way.

xnx 2y ago

Staying optimistic: "Exclusive: The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary" https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-house-pete-hegseth-defense-department https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/nx-s1-5371312/trump-white-hou...

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Deserved. Nice if true. But the article says the White House denies it. Make of that what you will...
- belter 2y ago
  This is how secure information need to be treated...acording to Pete: https://youtu.be/iV8-a1yUGNo?t=319 https://youtu.be/iV8-a1yUGNo?t=319

thunky 2y ago

Fully expect some new bonehead executive orders to distract us from this.