Independent of anything else, I do see the overton window shifting in the US, the most subtle of which are norms and expectations around acts of corruption.
Every nation has it's minor acts of corruption, small favours between friends, which I've always thought of as being functionally impossible to remove as they also allow for a flexible environment which allows things to get done.
However the norms seem to be shifting more towards the idea that those in power can act as they will, and in fact the expected thing is they will act to enrich themselves. I hope this does not happen, because this is death to entrepreneurship, this is one of those things that will poison the economy, when people no longer trust that what they make can be theirs, that others can look on in envy at the work they have built on their blood and sweat and can take it as their due because they have power.
That will create a chilling effect for anyone who wishes to create and will make them wonder as myself and many others have considered, whether it's better to create their life's work elsewhere.
I sincerely hope this doesn't happen here, once this mindset becomes a norm, it's incredibly hard thing to stamp out.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov, 1980
This relativism is encouraged, not because people genuinely believe all views are equal, but because it neutralizes inconvenient truths. If no one can claim authority, then no one can hold power accountable.
Perhaps part of the problem is that snooty intellectual elitists want everyone to be geopolitical geniuses and socially activist and fight for their hobby horses, when every nation, especially large ones, are in desperate need of people who mind their own business, keep their heads down, and contribute humbly to the common good.
Rather than being pushed through university and having technology shoved everywhere into their faces and bombarding them with messages from liars and hucksters at every step.
I honestly regret gaining knowledge about a lot of things that concern me because while “knowledge is power” it’s also known that “ignorance is bliss” because curiosity killed the cat.
If we’re a nation that stands and falls on the strength of social media disputes then perhaps it’s time to let the best bots win.
What do you even mean by this? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your comment sounds like you are advocating for a "let them eat cake" ideology.
Do you think our current administration exemplifies the three things you say we are in desperate need of?
And you’ve hit the nail on the head there, because rather than placing our family first, community and local concerns ahead of all else, or loving who we are and where we’re at,
we’re wrapped up in a self-inflicted TDS dystopia that surely consists of a 7-layer burrito of illusions and fantasy, because politics is a reality show that is often scripted.
This is a very common colloquial phrase assuming you are from the US - it refers to the President and their administration.
Can you answer the question now?
I'm tired of blaming people far away and quite distant from us for stuff. At a National Security Level, none [hopefully] of us know what's really going on and none of us can actually DO anything about it, except kvetch and moan and whine into our keyboards. Surely all you spycraft fans could admit that there may be a 7-layer burrito of fake-outs and misdirection and Fog of War involved with a fuckin' Signal chat that got a scoop for a single news outlet? We're literally on social media discussing a... single report... about a thread on social media that was seen by one too many people. Since MySpace was founded, the lamestream media reporters have made entire careers out of digging stuff out of someone's profile or their friends posts and splaying it out in a Film At Eleven. But is there anything new under the Sun?
I personally admire our President [although he's got some unattractive personal traits] and I love the administration's progress since his first election, but it's all such big-picture stuff that really affects you and me so little, in the here and now. What matters much more is what's going on next door, in my home parish, in my municipality, and then there's diocese and county and state all above that. What also matters is the Finger of God, his angels and his saints, and their participation in what's going on, when "spiritual autists" need to hold men accountable and attack and blame humans--your sisters and brothers--for events and occurrences which are surely beyond human power to control or even correctly perceive. You believe that "knowledge is power" so is your knowledge absolute? Does your knowledge confer absolute power to know and act? Is there no higher knowledge or wider justice than the knowledge wielded by your philosophy, Horatio?
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27761/pg27761-images.ht...
Name-calling, finding fault, spreading rumors and exposing scandalous gossip. When you get involved the Politics Reality Show and the Lamestream Media, that is your currency in trade. The media rakes muck and the politicians wallow in it and fling it back at them in the same briefing room, but it sullies not their impeccable blonde tresses nor designer Prada soles that you picked up in the 90210.
"The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared..."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-...
"Here are the Attack Plans That Trump's Advisers Shared on Signal" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481521
And Europe is most certainly not an exception to this, especially in current times. For instance 65% of EU citizens do not believe that high level corruption is sufficiently pursued. [1] And basically every EU country (outside of Scandiland) has a majority to vast majority who believe that corruption is widespread in their country.
IMO, this is more important.
That was once different, with Berlusconi at the helm in Italy while owning the major TV outlets.
Like most things in life, I suppose it is all relative? Diabetes sucks, but it sure sucks less than cancer.
Of course it would be lovely if there is zero corruption, zero pollution, zero nepotism etc. Which is highly unlikely to happen?
Which brings the question - what is the best country to live, relatively speaking?
And she is just the tip of the iceberg of EU corruption. In general such politicians only get repercusions selectively, and usually only when the political direction changes and they're no longer useful to the establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
https://www.politico.eu/article/5-things-to-know-about-ursul...
So in the US you have a corrupt, authoritarian takeover of a society – and in Europe you have well-meaning, but somewhat annoying, regulations that still need some work to function perfectly.
They could've just respected a browser's do-not-track header but chose not to. The EU legislators should've done that too, that is, dictate a standardized method for people to opt in.
Btw, I can dig up 3 dozen of other state institutions with cookie banners, if you so wish?
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/s/1Fn23uYVxK
The data depicts the exact opposite of what you are saying. As an entrepreneur, you can be “safe” knowing you will have far less chance to succeed in the EU.
Now compare companies by actual revenue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_E...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...
I omitted the 50 years distinction because, unsurprisingly, the companies in the US are younger.
None of these are actually relevant for founders, however, as even in the US you only have a couple dozen large cap companies, but millions of founders.
What is relevant is the share of employers per capita, as that shows us how many founders actually exist.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
You can’t call a region a “safe haven for entrepreneurs” if all the globally relevant entrepreneurs from that region are dead from old age.
Remember, Europe has double the population of the US. To lag behind so dramatically in the last 50 years is absolutely something to be concerned about.
Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
A big part of it is obviously the relative effects of twentieth century wars, both hot and cold. However, we also need to be aware that in recent decades, the US has just offered a better deal for entrepreneurs than Europe. By that I mean it has been a democratic, rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes.
It still has the last two things, of course. But the first two are also essential, long-term, and if they're eroded then the US might stop looking like a better deal.
On the one hand, studies have suggested that nearly half of highly successful entrepreneurs/founders in the US are immigrants or children of immigrants. As the US becomes more authoritarian and more corrupt, its easy to imagine people choosing to do their new startup from, say, Berlin.
On the other hand, lots of people choose Singapore, too; rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes — but without actual democracy.
I'm aware of my own inherent bias of wanting democracy to be important to people when making this kind of calculation, but I'm not sure that we have any real evidence of that.
I do agree on Singapore, though. It's an interesting case in that the benevolent dictatorship offers most of the advantages of Western democracies in terms of a law-based contract between rulers and the ruled, but with (arguably) a more solid promise of long-term social stability. There's definitely a chance that we all end up in that situation.
If we try to steer the ship back to the topic at hand...here's why we should be concerned that Europe's private sector isn't growing much or innovating much.
It turns out, Europeans entire way of life is funded by taxing the activity of the private sector and redistributing that money to things like healthcare, education, pensions, etc. Innovation (increased productivity) is the only way to reliably grow this pie, and innovation is exclusively the domain of the private sector due to the competitive pressures of markets.
If our private sector is entirely composed of aging industrial-age conglomerates waiting to be disrupted by more dynamic and innovative Chinese competitors (China is rapidly becoming better at the things European industrial companies used to dominate), our entire society is at risk. Militarily, we're sitting ducks, and economically, we are as well.
Modern Europe is economically heading the way of the Soviet Union, with an increasing share of GDP driven via centrally controlled government spending (we're now at over 50% on average in the EU, the Soviets were around 70-85% at peak).
Meanwhile, The Chinese Communist Party has ironically created one of the most dynamic, capitalist systems on the planet. The Chinese supposedly "communist" economy is in fact more market-driven than even the US economy (33% government-driven vs 36% government-driven), and you can see this in the numbers: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
It doesn't take a Phd to understand that a much larger and more unified population in China, with a more unleashed private sector, is going to eat the lunch of the smaller, disjointed micro-economies in Europe. And this doesn't even factor in the rise of industrial investment in the US in recent years.
This is why the rule of law is so important. It's a Maslow's Hierarchy type situation, and if the choice is between creating value in a system which will tax a good proportion of it away (current EU) and creating value in a system which may capriciously confiscate it (current China) then I argue that people are more incentivised in the first case.
Hard to say for sure about Jack Ma, did anything actually happen to him, and if so, was what happened to him fair? He seems better off than me.
China still has many billionaire and millionaire entrepreneurs, so it does appear that they have the concept of markets and capitalism on a leash in such a way that wins for the people of the China, the central government, and the entrepreneurs. Even if some of that isn't perfect, they live in a country of rising prosperity, and I live in a country of 30 years of stagnation where billionaires just bought the government to turn us into an impoverished 3rd world feudal state.
Even if I'm completely wrong about about China and it's all a lie or bubble, my country isn't exactly offering a future.
You are able to read this very comment (and write your own) in large part specifically because of public-sector innovation.
But thank god for the US department of Y combinator for taking a risk on all those evil private startups so they'd be able to support this government website.
I say "GDP doesn't matter that much" and you pivot back to how GDP isn't growing and that's a problem.
You say the future will be like the present except that China will replace the USA in the position the USA currently occupies. So what? The present is pretty good.
You say that the USSR is when the government does stuff and that's really bad. That's going to need more evidence.
Funding is a way of keeping track of the things that are done, not a way of doing things. Different economies put more or less importance on the accounting and more or less importance on the actual doing. Facts about funding cannot be conflated with facts about actual doing, especially in economies that are more likely to override the funding if they don't like the way the funding is causing doing. (That's something like what the "government fraction of GDP" is - it's the percentage of times the people didn't like the free market results and chose to override them)
> Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
Please actually have a look at the EU list and click through to the companies. They are all directly linked in Wikipedia. The majority is from the 1980s and younger.
* Volkswagen: Founded on May 28, 1937, as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH, later renamed Volkswagenwerk.
* Shell: Formed in April 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (established in 1890) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (founded in 1897).
* TotalEnergies: Established in 1924 as Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP).
* Glencore: Originated as Marc Rich + Co AG in 1974.
* BP: Incorporated on April 14, 1909, as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
* Stellantis: Formed on January 17, 2021, from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was established through the merger of Fiat S.p.A. (founded July 11, 1899) and Chrysler Group LLC (originally Chrysler Corporation, founded June 6, 1925). PSA Group was Established as Peugeot Société Anonyme in 1966, but its roots trace back to Peugeot's original founding in 1810 as a family industrial business.
* BMW: Traces its origins to Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG, established on March 7, 1916.
* Mercedes-Benz Group: Resulted from the merger of Benz & Cie. (founded in 1883) and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (founded in 1890) in 1926.
* Électricité de France (EDF): Established in 1946 following the nationalization of France's electricity sector.
* Banco Santander: Founded on May 15, 1857, as Banco de Santander.
We could do the full list and then weight by revenue or something but broadly, I think the point that 'pembrook is making is proven.
As an aside, one feature of LLMs that I genuinely do enjoy is the ability to ask for intern-level research like this.
If this were true, 15 years would definitely be enough time to show up in some form of data you can cite about the death of American startup culture.
America has jut installed a corrupt autocratic government that has immediately become mired in corruption, graft and defiance of the rule of law.
That will have a negative effect going forward.
American media is just as innovative as the rest of their economy, meaning they are constantly finding ways to prey on your emotions and your eyeballs with stories and content.
In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The US government has been trying to get Europe to invest in its own defense for 50+ years. It's been trying to solve immigration for 50+ years. It's been trying to come to a solution on healthcare for 50+ years. Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
How naive are you? I mean seriously.
Your post is one of the worst faux savvy takes I have seen. A true classic of the genre. The US Government is not an independent thing: it is made up of people. And if you haven't notice the current set of people are doing lots of gigantic, unprecedented things.
You either have a truly massive case of normalcy bias, or you approve of their lawlessnes and are running cover.
But I totally get it, this time is different! The US is in crisis! How could I not see the obvious signs?? It's all over the headlines!
https://reason.com/2025/03/17/allies-cancel-orders-of-f-35s-...
How do you not see that this time is different?
Blatantly untrue. America has spent 50 years ensuring europe is reliant on America for security, because America likes the economic benefits that brings.
https://www.ft.com/content/ad16ce08-763b-11e9-bbad-7c18c0ea0...
> The US has warned that greater military co-operation between EU countries would be a “dramatic reversal” of three decades of transatlantic defence integration, in the latest sign of the fraying relationship between Washington and Brussels.
That's 2019. When Trump was in power.
> It said that Washington was “deeply concerned” that approval of the rules for the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, launched in 2017 to plug gaps in Europe’s military power, would “produce duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defence resources and unnecessary competition between Nato and the EU”.
Uh, Joe, it was a pretty bad scene the last time that happened.
At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough and shouldering enough of the burden, and I find it plausible that they legitimately did wish Europe would do that, the above paragraph notwithstanding.
Except whenever Europe did try to, America used its soft power to dissuade Europe from this course of action, and instead continue funneling money into American arms manufacturers.
> In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The changes in that past couple of months are, objectively, enormous disruptions to the previous status quo (of the last 50+ years).
NATO may still exist on paper, but not in the world. The US has estranged almost all of its closest allies that it's had for my entire lifetime — I'm 50 — and in ways that are offensive, threatening, and simultaneously weirdly petty, and which would take a decade or more to repair even in the unlikely event that somehow the current administration was somehow replaced today, and efforts began immediately.
The US president has also opened up avenues for corruption and out-in-the-open bribe-taking (meme coin, banks of hotel rooms, his wife's vanity projects, etc etc etc) that are absolutely unprecedented in US history, of the ilk historically seen more in places like Malaysia, Peru, or the Philippines under Marcos. (Even Silvio Berlusconi was substantially more tactful and less obvious about it.)
At the same time, the administration is performatively flouting the rule-of-law, in ways completely unprecedented in the past 50 years. Openly defying judicial orders. Disappearing people without due process (yes, like all fledgling autocracies, they are starting with the already marginalized; purported gang members, brown-skinned or Asian permanent residents).
The childhood parables like "The Emperor's New Clothes" never actually, like, literally occurred in the America I knew, until this guy. Last time it was just "my crowd was bigger than Obama's" but this time it's "Ukraine started the war" (somehow arranging to be invaded by a murderous dictatorship waging a campaign of rape, torture, and mass child abduction).
> Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
Way more than "nothing" has already happened. More substantial, self-directed change has already happened in 2-3 months than in Trump's entire first term, or any term of any president, in 50-100 years. I strongly suspect this trend will continue.
As you can no doubt infer, I am not a huge fan of this administration. But neither am I a partisan; I would characterize this administration as worse than any administration, Republican or Democrat, of my lifetime — and by a lot. (I include Trump's first term in that, but only because that static, glacial-pace US government you think still exists did still exist then, so even though the graft and weird dictator-fetish/emulation was present then, too, it didn't have the impact that it's already had in this term.)
Whether you think it is worse or better, I mean, we all have different priorities but it is unarguably very different — and has already made the US government very different — than anything seen in the past 50+ years.
Washington is and always has been corrupt, and political battles no matter how hilariously trivial in context to history have always been "the most important of our lifetimes."
Everything is fine and going to be fine.
Sure, the TV and social media will tell you that every year's crisis is "the most important of our lifetimes", and that isn't true. But obviously, it sometimes has to be true, right? I mean, at least once, and probably several times, depending from when to when we are alive.
"Important" is a matter of perspective, and also desired outcome, so YMMV but in my 50+ years of life there have been 3 such events driven by or pertaining to the US government:
- the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War
- response to 9/11 and the aftermath
- 2025 US table-flip of the post-WW2 world order, pursuit of autocracy, and assault on the rule of law
Every government is corrupt; it's a matter of degree, and the reason you can't name a US government as corrupt as this one is because there hasn't been one. Watergate? Iran/Contra? B.J. Clinton? It's not close to the same degree.
Lesser disruptions have included the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2007 financial crisis, the internet, AIDS, maybe crack cocaine in the 80s, ... but those are more emergent side effects of human behavior than things done with intent. Things we deal with, not things we do.
Everything is fine? Disagree. Everything is going to be fine? Well, whew, good to know.
But I understood your point to be that everything is the same, and will be the same, broadly speaking, as it's been for the past 5 decades.
But it's not. It's wildly different, already. And even if, as you suggest, the 2026 elections somehow happened without egregious interference from the ruling administration (unlikely), and flipped control of congress to the opposition (maybe) — there's still no way to go back to the "before" times.
Very unlikely, just based on the math. Even less likely now that Trump is overhauling the federal election system.
I am European, and every time I open one of those stupid locked-on bottle caps, I feel pain for my country, for Europe (and for my face).
Sure, Europe has some red tape that should be removed but don't paint it as some kind of Kafka's universe because it's not that bad. I'm from east side of Iron Curtain and I remember how bad that was.
Also, most of the businesses will do what's needed to be done because the market is big.
Personally, I prefer to live a life in a slightly over regulated place that at least keeps common people in mind than whatever is US turning into.
Cookies stuff is indeed badly made and should be fixed. The should just mandate websites to accept a http header with relevant option (no-cookies, no-advertisment, no-tracking etc.).
Still, it's not the problem of regulator in itself. Rather, companies are taking advantage of the current version of the law because it's favorable to them - they know most people with quickly accept whatever to close the popup.
I am honestly curious. If you are willing to go as far as they have, why not go that relatively tiny extra step?
I think it is a problem with the regulator. The cookie agreement mandate has legitimately fucked up the web for everybody. It's also done it in a way that mostly neutralizes the intended benefit of the law (because everybody just clicks the "fine! stuff your cookies up my arse or whatever, just get on with it!" button).
But a competent regulator must both measure the impacts of their regulations, and take action based on that data. It seems a weird place to stop.
The problem is that every other company thinks they are Google or Meta. So they start overcollecting user data, in hope that one day they will be able to generate revenue from them. So they end up with overcomplicated compliance solutions and GDPR consulting fees, but without any actual use for the data they collect.
I need to record names and address across the European Union. What character encodings are illegal for such fields in a database?
Is life so bad in Europe that’s what you have to complain about? Sounds truly like a nightmare - caps attached to bottles? Barbaric.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/whatsapp-signal-eu-chat-contr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...
So you replied about the UK specifically. I catered to that, and then reconnected it back to Europe as a whole, which I was originally discussing.
If someone here is derailing the conversation, it isn't me. Especially now that we're discussing the meta and not even the original subject.
You know that it is easy to remove the plastic locking the caps on? (Just twist them) And to me it is also easy to drink with them locked on, just have it side ways.
So I also do have lots of complaints about the EU, but this ain't it.
Yes, the bottle caps annoy me, but if the beverage companies stuck to the much more recyclable glass bottles we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
Yes, the GDPR popups annoy me, but the law also punishes companies for being creepy exploitative bastards. If they had any morals, we wouldn't have the popups either.
So yes, Europe is sometimes frustrating, but at least it does some government. The US simply doesn't. It's a free-for-all hellscape and I'd much rather be lightly scraped on the face by a little plastic cap that one time a month I need to drink from a disposable plastic bottle than live in...that...
The popups are there for companies that ignore basic data sovereignty of "don't use my personal data until I say you can"
Yes, plastic bottles (and caps) are likely a major environmental disaster.
The alternative to regulation is innovation: force bottle makers to invest x% of their profit or revenue into actual research on plastic recycling or capture.
That's a very easy but hand-wavy thing to say.
How exactly would your suggestion work? Are the companies supposed to share their findings from this forced research with the world? What happens if they happen to discover something that doesn't help with the plastic problem but does improve their bottom line somehow? I can't see this functioning in any way whatsoever.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...
It will click no no no no no to all cookie prompts for you, and hide the popup. It's sad that we need to do this, the companies could just not track you at all. But I haven't had a need to manually click these popups for quite a some time now.
The internet is borderline unusable without extensions like "I don't care about cookies". And in situations where you care about them, you can not, because something has to record that I've seen the GDPR consent form. Recently, in the name of... who knows what, it's become a pain in the ass to access Google maps from Google search.
The idea that Europe can become a safe haven for entrepreneurs is beyond laughable. The vaunted "rule of law" has degraded into nothing more than fetishizing arbitrary and irrational rules.
Look here: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ > Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies
If you don't use cookies or they're stricly necessary, no need for a banner.
Many websites work perfectly fine without a banner, for example, Hacker News.
Grade school needs rank choice voting activities to help make it feel familiar.
An audit would be listing and flagging items for review. What DOGE is doing is actually taking the decision of cutting stuff, without review, as retribution, to fully capture the state for the GOP and Musk.
Trump immediatly fired every inspector general as soon as he could (in violation of federal law).
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/25/trump-fires-inspectors-gene...
It's a combination of AI being owned from these mega corporations and corruption at the highest level that I'm losing sight of what is the purpose building my startup business in an authoritarian landscape.
Trump illegally promoting Elon's corporation with a yard sale, kissing his feet for donating millions to his campaign thanks to citizens united, allowing him to ransack the federal government as an unelected official, to making vandalism a domestic terrorist act for people fed up when him,and now putting Elon in charge of investigating Signalgate.
People need to stand up now before they cannot.
We just need liberals to embrace the 2nd with as much fervor as the right.
That said, your examples are indeed corruption. But the parent did not make any equivalency. He gave purported examples of corruption. One can say that they're unsubstantiated, but that's a different argument.
And yes, saying "If you want to look at corruption in the US" and then avoiding mentioning the extremely large and very apparent corruption actively happening right now in the Trump admin - that is intentionally creating a false equivalency by implicitly saying "what's happening right now doesn't matter it's the same old same old."
So you're OK with the Trump admin's rampant corruption?
How is Trump using executive orders to punish law firms he doesn't like not corruption?
Open your eyes, man.
The law firms he's going after are the ones that knowingly lied and generated the whole "Russia Collusion" conspiracy theory. If they are willing to sell their integrity so cheaply, they deserve be barred.
It deserved to be charged, and it deserves to be prosecuted fully. I do not accept corruption from government officials regardless of the letter after their name on the ballot.
We have an adversarial legal system. Law firms take up a variety of positions for a variety of reasons. Even the most despicable criminal deserves a vigorous defense at trial. If they did something illegal, charge and prosecute them. Executive orders are entirely the wrong vehicle. It's wielding presidential authority like a mob boss.
Keep drinking that kool-aid.
Granted, but bad faith lying for political reasons should not be included in that.
If you think what they did should be illegal but isn't now, work with congress to pass legislation that makes it illegal.
The rule of law is critical to the American system. The EOs targeting law firms are extrajudicial nonsense, and frankly impeachment worthy.
Where's the lie? It's a fact Trump's 2016 campaign held a meeting in his home with a Russian spy to discuss an exchange of relaxed relations for dirt on Clinton. It's a fact Russia hacked the DNC and Trump helped disseminate the content of that hack. It's also a fact that Trump's campaign manager exchanged internal campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer, while the GRU was waging an influence campaign on social media targeting Americans to sway the election.
How is that not collusion?
There were actions that Russia took during the 2016 election season to support the election of Trump. This is a well documented fact.
There was a meeting between a Russian intelligence connected lawyer and Trump campaign personnel including Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. In this meeting, the Trump campaign was offered information to use against the Clinton campaign. This is a well documented fact.
After thorough investigation, it was concluded that there was not substantial explicit collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. But that same evidence showed they were extremely aligned in their goals. Trump was clearly Russia's preferred candidate and Russia was spending time, money, and effort to support his candidacy in a number of ways.
That investigation was impeded by Trump, as Mueller found in his report and testified to Congress.
Trump and his acolytes like to take "Trump did not explicitly collude with Russia" to mean "There is nothing whatsoever to the idea that Russia wanted Trump to win and took actions to support that outcome." And that's just not the case. That's putting some extreme interpretations on the actual facts of the matter.
And believe it or not, Trump can't control who Russia chooses as their candidate. The UK Labour Govt had Kamala as their chosen candidate and campaigned for her to win.
Foreign governments always have a view on preferred winners in elections. But just because Russia independently wanted Trump to win and tried to influence the election without his co-ordinating with him says nothing at all about Trump as a candidate. It more speaks to Russia's intelligence assessments.
MI-6 wasn't hacking Republicans and laundering the material through Wikileaks so that Kamala could crow about it.
Kamala's campaign wasn't meeting James Bond in her home and making secret deals with him and lying about it when caught.
Yes, it speaks to their assessment that Trump is the candidate that supports Putin's interests.
Russia is a dictatorship that is often working in opposition to US interests. The UK is a close ally with an elected government. I know which one I'd rather be endorsed and supported by, should I be a political candidate. If Russia was supporting me I would want to understand why, because I don't feel my interests and positions would align with Russia's. I'd want to understand why they think my election would be good for them. Maybe I like those reasons, maybe I don't, but it's an opportunity for reflection and evaluation.
Don Jr could have said "No, that seems like it would be potentially seen as inappropriate" when that Russian contact reached out. Instead, he replied, "if it's what you say I love it".
"In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of 'collusion.' In so doing, the Office recognized that the word 'collusion' was used in public reporting about the investigation, but collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law." (Mueller Report, Volume I, p. 2)
So it's a sleight of hand:
- raise the bar from collusion to conspiracy
- say the bar for conspiracy is not met
- therefore Trump is exonerated of collusion
But the charge of collusion still stands. And as I laid out in my other post, the facts support the plain meaning of collusion - "secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others".
> After thorough investigation, it was concluded that there was not substantial explicit collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The second reason this is important is that because the bar was raised to conspiracy, we cannot claim that the investigation that was performed was sufficient. It wasn't a thorough investigation of conspiracy, so we can't even say they didn't find enough evidence when they didn't look under the biggest rocks.
For starters, the investigators were essentially barred from investigating any financial links. In 2008 Trump's own son is quoted saying "In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets", so any serious investigation of links between Trump and Russia should necessarily include financial links.
And of course now we have hindsight to know why financial links were verboten -- after the investigation concluded, it was revealed by none other than Michael Cohen, that Trump was actually brokering a "Trump Tower: Moscow" deal during the 2016 campaign. He had already signed a non-binding letter of intent with a Russian company, and the deal included a penthouse dedicated to Vladimir Putin. But Trump when asked about his dealings in Russia in 2016 had said this:
"I have nothing to do with Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia – for anything. I don’t have any deals there. I have no deals that could happen there because we’ve stayed away."
No, we know about this because Michael Cohen was arrested for campaign finance violations, for crimes he committed in 2016 on the behest of Trump, to buy the silence of a porn star Trump had an affair with.
And this doesn't even get into the second volume, which details the myriad ways Trump obstructed the investigation, which included firing investigators (Comey), witnesses tampering (dangling pardons in front of Manafort), lying to investigators (according to Mueller's testimony), etc. etc.
So it's safe to say the investigation was not thorough or complete.
This is just an infinite fractal mosaic of malfeasance, degeneracy, ineptitude, buffoonery, and all around disappointing behavior, from all parties.
The Mueller report did not clear Trump. Clearly you did not read it, it's damning. Only according to Trump is he cleared by that report.
The Mueller Report Vol I firmly establishes that the Russians sought to interfere in the 2016 election, they explicitly preferred Trump over Clinton and aimed to help him by 1) hacking her campaign and 2) spreading misinformation on social media. It further found that despite the Trump administration claiming they the campaign had 0 contacts with Russian nationals, in fact they had over 100 contacts.
One such contact was a Russian spy named Natalia Veselnitskaya. She met in Trump Tower with Don Jr, Jared Kushner, and Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort. They discussed relaxing international relations with Russia, in exchange for providing dirt on the Clinton campaign. These facts were admitted to by the members of that meeting, after they first attempted to cover it up with a lie that the meeting was to discuss adoption of Russian orphans. Absurd.
It's also a fact that Donald Trump aided in the dissemination of the hacked materials, as he referenced them constantly and even implored Russia to find more. The Mueller reports found that GRU operatives actively responded to that public request from Trump. Again, this is all in Vol I of the report.
Then there's the smoking gun, the fact that Paul Manafort was caught funneling internal campaign data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a known Russian intelligence officer. This was not in the Mueller Report, but established later by the Senate Intel Committee in volume VI of their report on Russian active measures during the 2016 election, at a time it was chaired by none other than current Secretary of State, then Senator, Republican Marco Rubio. It was further confirmed by the Department of Treasury.
So I ask you again: where's the lie?
Because the facts found by investigators show collusion happened. Russia wanted Trump to win, and Trump wanted to win; the two coordinated publicly and in private; the campaign lied about it every step of the way; and they obstructed any investigation as much as they could, which included firing the FBI director, and lying about the contents of the Mueller report when it was finally released.
It's a stain of historical magnitude on the office of the presidency, and the fact it wasn't dealt with properly in 2016 is a direct cause of us being in this thread today, right now, discussing imbeciles in the highest echelons of government conducting themselves like people who can get away with anything. Because they already have.
The fact that Trump made jokes about emails that showed the DNC cheating the primaries to disfavor Sanders and give first sight of questions to Hillary doesn't prove he's a Russian agent.
"Because the facts found by investigators show collusion happened. Russia wanted Trump to win, and Trump wanted to win; the two coordinated publicly and in private; the campaign lied about it every step of the way; and they obstructed any investigation as much as they could, which included firing the FBI director, and lying about the contents of the Mueller report when it was finally released."
There is no evidence Trump campaign colluded with Russia. If there was, he would have been indicted.
That hasn't been the case since at least 2000[0]
[0] https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/sitting-president%E2%80%...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
Edit: And the Mueller report notes[1] that as the primary reason Trump wasn't indicted. You keep making false statements about what's in the report. Perhaps that's something you might think about doing if you're going to use it as a source.
It does because that's the reason Trump colluded with them.
> in fact backfired on them.
How do you figure?
Look around: the US is currently realigning itself diplomatically to favor Russia and turn against traditional allies like Canada/UK and Europe. NATO is hanging by a thread as Trump threatens to invade Greenland. US is capitulating on every demand Russia is making in Ukraine, lifting sanctions, dropping efforts to track kidnapped children, halting funding to Ukraine...
It could hardly be going any better for them! How do you think it backfired?
> doesn't prove he's a Russian agent.
I didn't claim he's a Russian agent, I claimed he colluded with Russia.
> There is no evidence Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Yes there is and I already told you what that is, but I'll put it in bullet form:
- Lying about over 100 Russian contacts that happened.
- Lying about a hotel deal in Russia that was being put together while Trump was running for office.
- Talking to a Russian spy about hacking his opponent in secret and lying about it when caught.
- Handing campaign data to Russian intelligence officers while they were engaged in active measures to interfere in the election.
- Campaigning using materials from the DNC that Russians hacked specifically to help Trump.
etc. etc.
If that is not evidence, what kind of evidence would you say is evidence of collusion?
> If there was, he would have been indicted.
That he has not been indicted for this is not evidence collusion didn't happen, primarily because, as the Mueller report lays out (and you would know this if you had actually read it) "collusion" is not actually a crime for which one can be indicted under US code.
DeNiro says it about as succinctly as possible in Casino - https://youtu.be/-Dujc4xJ9gs?si=2cYzK8FSygQgunNt&t=57
"The investigation found no evidence that President Trump or any of his aides coordinated with the Russian government’s 2016 election interference."
"However, "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_inve...
"Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion..."
Who's Robin? Like Batman?
> and the Columbian Journalism Review
Okay, surely you agree with them about the danger of Trump today?
"When the president attacks the First Amendment from the Oval Office, or makes sweeping and false statements about some of the most important news organizations in the world, you can hide from it and hope it goes away, or you can speak up, saying publicly, That’s not right, and it’s not what I believe. Quite frankly, too few of you have stood up as we’ve come under attack."
Is Trump a threat to our democracy - yes or no?
https://www.cjr.org/politics/cjr-editor-addresses-congress.p...
You sure as shit seem to hope so yourself there…
This does not follow. Even in highly corrupt authoritarian countries entrepreneurship can flourish. Just consider Turkey or Russia. In such places one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses.
Just seems logical to me that if entrepreneurship was flourishing, we would see more economic growth as a result.
I do not know about entrepreneurship, but I do know that a Russian’s average purchase power is significantly higher than what you might expect from just looking at the GDP
GDP to US dollar is only works IF your export and import is only traded with US dollar which doesn't to be the case since Russia is trade with Brics partner that bypass all sanction and not using US dollar
And that's ignoring other externalities.
Or like building companies switched to Russian military contracts to build factories for drone, ammunition etc. to make weapons to kill Ukrainians.
If one has no moral compass, one can absolutely flourish as a businessman in Russia.
Scams and frauds are going to flourish under Trump because the guy himself is keen on running scams and frauds from the White House. Who is going to investigate crypto scams when POTUS is launching his own pump and dump shitcoin? It's going to be scams and frauds from the top all the way down.
Exactly also already happening in the US and with Law Firms.
"Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/trump-rescin...
In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted.
It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.
It is mind-boggling that 18 people were on this thread, and none of them ever suggested that this discussion would be better served in a SCIF. To say nothing of SecDef starting the thread on Signal in the first place.
How many other such threads are active at the highest levels of government right now?
Does Chinese intelligence know?
I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved. But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable.
Sure, but short of something similar to the UH CEO, do you think anything will actually happen to them?
If they’re doing this then the president presumably knows and does too. Even if they get prosecuted and convicted (after years of legal nonsense) they’d just get pardoned.
Why would that level of anti-democratic corruption have any interest in justice, when the very core of that party is based on maintaining racist injustice around the world?
The only thing we can hope for is that our system collapses and our economy weakens, while foreign economies grow.
This is the United States of America.
There's nothing wrong with writing a new constitution. France is at its 5th iteration, and some candidates propose a 6th republic, nothing dictates that you're supposed to get it right on the first try.
France has been toppled by internal revolutions and external enemies multiple times in the time that the U.S. has existed. It's not an example to aspire to.
And give France a bit more credit; they were instrumental in the US’s own internal revolution against the British.
These morons are going to get American citizens killed due to gross incompetence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes. I'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if I didn't think we were in genuine danger.
I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen.
How it didn't end after the Al-Nasr babies story, or after Biden was caught laundering lies about beheaded babies, or the NYT laundering lies about mass rape, I just don't know. And still the Greens couldn't get 5%?
There's something deeply dark and disturbed across the entirety of American society, and it seems like most of us can't even see it... Well, the consequences will arrive regardless.
in case you’re not being flippant and genuinely believe what you’re saying, it’s because we had only two viable candidates, one of whom should never have been legitimized. the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice. it comes across as saying that you’d rather do nothing than do something to—if not move things in the right direction—at least make it easier to permit the right direction in the future. no, instead you or others like you choose to exercise your cynical blend of moral superiority, demonstrating that you care more about your own sense of self worth than actually, you know, holding your nose and doing something. holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’, regardless of how much damage they’ll allow to happen in the name of some false standard.
> we had only two viable candidates
That's a major part of the problem, and not one to be ignored or accepted.
> the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice.
Nope. It's simple facts. Both 'viable' candidates promised to continue arming a nation which is currently conducting genocide, as confirmed by basically every major human rights group and even some Israeli genocide scholars. That's thoroughly illegal by long-held, hard-won domestic and international law.
You can argue as to why that is, or accuse people who say so of "cycnicism" and "moral superiority", but it's a fact and needs to be said.
There is NO good reason for Harris to have ignored the wishes of the vast majority (77%) of her voter base in order to keep arming mass slaughter. Turning around on that one choice would have won her the election in a landslide, and anyone who looked at the polls knew it.
> you care more about your own sense of self worth
Again, it's simple facts. America is so thoroughly depraved that 98% of voters chose to go for someone arming an active genocide.
Not about me, not about my self worth (bro, I'm an anonymous account with basically no reputation to win or lose here). It's about America, and how a large part of it got conned into thinking that voting for a genocidaire was the right and practical thing to do somehow.
If genocide was properly considered as beyond the pale; far, far over any basic red line for human decency, then Americans would have gone for a third party candidate, or forced a change in nominations from the two 'viable' parties. It's up for debate why they didn't do that, but the simple fact is that 98% of US voters voted for continuing a live-streamed series of atrocities.
> holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’,
The gulf between 'perfect' and 'complicit in genocide' is so, so vast. I refuse to believe that you can't understand that.
We don't like this any more than you do, yet you point the finger and offer no solutions, plan, or course of action. Your obstinacy and that of people like you served only to hand the election to those you so vehemently stand against, but rather than admit your own part in this mess we are now in, you chose to attack the people who made a rational choice to vote for Kamala given the circumstance.
I'm sorry, but you're part of the problem, here. Accept that and heal.
Were they better options? Probably. I personally was a fan of Stein. Were they available to us on any realistic level in our broken "democratic" system? No. Had I voted for her, my vote would have counted for nothing.
They had zero backing when thrown up against the two candidates that the very real and present two-party system pushed in front of us, and that was that.
Every time someone wants to whine about Harris supporting genocide, I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of bots who have never seen a US ballot, have no idea how our party system works and are incapable of comprehending the vast network of chicanery that results in two major parties drowning every other option we might actually want to vote for.
The illusion of a choice is not actually a choice, is it? So, at the time, the best plan was "NOT TRUMP AGAIN" leaving Harris as our strongest option _even though most of us did not agree with 100% of her policies_. We had a knife to our throat, and a knife at our back. We tried to get everyone on board with the knife at our back since, sure it would hurt, but at least it wouldn't kill us and we could work to move closer to a better solution.
Instead, we're now getting slit ear-to-ear because of impetuous fools who can't see past their own blind outrage.
When you feel like that for a couple decades and you start to look for the best possible outcomes that everyone will actually agree to, things start to look really, really bleak. Again, it's a War of Attrition and historically speaking, the people with the most resources win those.
Rally. Protest. Please. I have no idea what else to do. I'd lead the damned charge in the revolution if I thought anyone would follow, but my experience has been the opposite. The liberals of the world all seem to hate each other just as much as the conservatives do, so I'll be dipped if they ever really come together on anything, these days.
I don't like my conduct in the earlier comments, but after being that guy who tried to tell everyone the two-party system has no power without us for so damned long, I am not going to sit idly and listen to someone accuse me of supporting genocide when I made the most rational choice I could have with what was presented while they did nothing, as though Gaza's horrifying reality is the only thing the American people have to worry about right now. We live in a zero-sum game, and I hate it, but that's it.
Anyway, sorry to anyone I offended.
Voter: I will vote for you, because the only alternative that our party have allowed [0] a chance to win is even worse somehow.
Other voter: Hey, you know that candidate promised to continue to arm genocide, right?
Voter: Supporting her was the most rational choice. You whine. It feels like you're a bot. You don't understand the complex zero-sum game we are in. You, who I know nothing about, did nothing; while I voted. Also you're cynical and think you're morally superior.
Other voter: O-kay.
Like I said: 98% of America voted for a candidate who promised to arm genocide. We should be sanctioned by the world, and the only reason we aren't is because we threaten to either fuck their economy, ie [1], or literally invade them [2].
0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...
1 - https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/12/16/occupied-terr...
2 - https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
Stein actually aligns far better with the real opinions of the majority of the American people; on affordable housing, on healthcare, on the military industrial complex, on the environment, on taxing the rich, on fracking, on education, and indeed on arming genocide.
However, the entire political and media class united to smear her as a "Russian stooge". Despite a complete lack of evidence, American voters ate that slop up and asked for seconds. It still disturbs me, how easy they made that look.
A Senate investigation ran from 2016 to 2019, investigating Stein. They found absolutely nothing, and completely cleared her in 2019... But try and find a corporate media article which acknowledges this. Many Americans still believe it; like WMDs in Iraq, or the Earth being 6,000 years old.
Try and find a Democrat who stood up for her this entire time. Nope - accusing Harvard-educated Jewish doctor ladies of being Russian assets without a shred of proof didn't seem to bother anyone.
Democrats went to extreme and even illegal lengths to take Greens off the ballot everywhere they could, and then accused the Greens of never winning elections (not true btw [0, 1]).
The media refused to cover any of those Green wins, then smeared the Greens as only appearing for Presidential elections as a "grift". A grift! In a race where that same media presented *Donald 'TrumpCoin' Trump as a serious candidate!
Let's see who was grifting:
Harris raised more than a billion dollars, and received 48.3% of the vote.
Stein raised $2.7m, 370 times less, and received 1% of the vote; in other words, her campaign dollars were more than 7 times more effective than Harris' despite rabid media bias.
But you can't explain any of this to a Harris voter. The real problem, I believe, is that once you've been conned into actively supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, you can't really acknowledge that and still think of yourself as a good person. So people just lash out instead with personal attacks. The ones above are about the mildest I've seen, to be fair; usually bringing up Harris' complicity in genocide gets you called an asshole. Go figure.
0 - https://www.gpelections.org/election-history/victories/
1 - https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/2024-july-01/
I assume you're referring to the livestreamed October 7th attacks?
But yeah, I agree with you. Nothing is going to happen. Just like no one at the top has been held to any kind of a standard at all since maybe Nixon. Who knows, if he had just stuck it out maybe he would have gotten off too.
"Trump’s crypto empire set to expand with new stablecoin and investment fund offerings" - https://apnews.com/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-truth-...
"...Witkoff and his father, Trump’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial with Trump and his sons last year. Under the terms outlined on the company’s website, a Trump-owned company has the “right to receive 75% of the net protocol revenues” from World Liberty Financial after expenses..."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077789-dying-every-day
As another commenter said, there is a thread over in r/army where soldiers are sharing stories of military careers that have ended for far less.
Or, if the chat participants really want to double down that no classified info was shared in the chat, then the Atlantic reporter should just release the full details of the chat, unredacted, and let the world make up their own mind in the info is or should have been classified.
Edit: Lol, I was too slow, looks like the Atlantic did exactly that. The CNN headline on their homepage is currently "Details Hegseth shared in Signal chat were classified, sources say. After intel officials and the White House said the group didn't disclose classified info, The Atlantic decided to release the texts." https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-presidency-news...
> What channel should they use?
Are you f'ing kidding me? You think the federal government doesn't have actual secure channels for discussing sensitive information besides Signal and email? Why don't you just read the f'ing texts, where Mike Waltz specifically references the proper secure channels to use.
> It's not against the law, actually. The President and his cabinet operate on their own rules per the Constitution
Ahh, yes, the new Republican defense of "the law is whatever the President says it is". Actually, no, the executive branch must still follow the law.
And, FWIW, Hegseth and Rubio certainly disagree with you. Just watch their tirades from a few years ago against a previous cabinet member for using unsecured communication channels.
But it's not clear that will progress to anything further.
The exact legal advice passed on to me around answering questions in a deposition played out live; wild.
1. The conversation didn't include the President. Here's the full participant list for that thread: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:on5oeyw...
2. There was tons of classified material shared including specific flight times and weapons systems. Here's a helpful side-by-side on what operational details are by default classified as Secret: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandlaws.bsky.social/post/3ll...
How were the staffers archiving the disappearing messages?
What evidence do you have that the Biden administration conducted official government business on Signal?[1]
If they were above board and legal with this they wouldn’t have forced their republican congressional oversight committee to drag them into hearings.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-cia-director-blames-biden-2...
Here is CISA page updated last under Biden's admin:
https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/mobile-commun...
In the PDF on that page you'll see Signal recommended for communication.
> Former Biden officials, though, said that Signal was never permitted on their government phones.
> “We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official on the condition of anonymity. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
The CISA advice wasn't telling public employees to use Signal for classified communications or communications subject to FOIA.
You're going to be completely unable to show me evidence that this was ever okay, because it wasn't.
"General Recommendations 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. CISA recommends an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is compatible with both iPhone and Android operating systems, allowing for text message interoperability across platforms. Such apps may also offer clients for MacOS, Windows, and Linux, and sometimes the web. These apps typically support one-on-one text chats, group chats with up to 1,000 participants, and encrypted voice and video calls. Additionally, they may include features like disappearing messages and images, which can enhance privacy. When selecting an end-to-end"
Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
The chat was a discussion mostly concerning opinions on the actions and high level logistics. Actual plans were distributed through CENTCOM.
It's completely ok because it's the President's cabinet. They run the government.
There is no authority higher than the president to determine the status of information.
Yes, you are showing nothing in that quote authorizes or recommends using Signal for official communications subject to sunshine laws. Certainly not authorizing it for classified data.
> Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
Hand-waving is not evidence, so my assertion you'd be unable to provide evidence stands. People far above my pay grade say obviously this was classified and while the president can de-classify, and he can pardon them for mishandling classified information, what they did was illegal and there's no un-ringing that particular bell.
"Organizations may already have these best practices in place, such as secure communication platforms1 and multifactor authentication (MFA) policies. In cases where organizations do not, apply the following best practices to your mobile devices."
"Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by CISA."
That they gave themselves the authority to endanger national security doesn't change the fact they endangered national security, and in fact makes what they did worse as it's intentional.
That doesn't mean they're being archived according to the law.
This is like ripping the warning sticker off an oxygen tank and pretending that makes it safe to use while smoking.
It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.
https://dowhatmatters.medium.com/dei-to-dui-cronyism-undermi...
The problem is that the people in control of the power to impeach are also picked for being yes men/women. It's yes-men all the way down by design.
He got the Supreme Court and the judiciary leaning his way in his first term. Congress is controlled by either his Republican primary candidates, or Republicans who are too afraid to cross him.
Now he’s purging from the federal branch anyone who is not completely ideologically loyal to him. That is the true purpose of Doge.
People demanded this and they got it eventually.
Also I suppose it’s crucial to point out that it’s not just controlling the marketplace for news, it also needed one party to be absolutely focused only on winning elections, and eschewing bipartisanship.
So on one side yes, people demanded it. But on the other side, they were manipulated to think one issue is more important than the other, to think that "the whole system is broken" etc.
Even 10 organized people with no weapons are _way_ more dangerous than one armed person. That's why all autocratic regimes firstly jail/kill organizers (right now it's Turkey). Just having eyes in 10 different places is more important.
As Jefferson really liked (proposed by Franklin): "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God."
* assassinate the president of Japan
* assassinate health care CEO
* nearly assassinate the soon to be president
Firstly, he has an insatiable desire for attention, admiration, and generally benefitting himself. That’s what causes his drive.
Secondly, he has no scruples or adheres to any morals or ethics whatsoever, he is completely ruthless. This allows him to do and say whatever serves him the most in any given situation.
Lastly, he has a specific type of charisma that has purchase with a certain segment of the people.
That’s is the full extent of it. He has no other skills or useful attributes. Anything else, especially if it’s at all technical or practical, comes from the people he’s surrounded himself with.
To interact with your point, he’s not even particularly adept at enlisting sycophants. Remember his first administration, when numerous aides and associates had both public and private disagreements with him (as one example out of many, I’ll refer to Rex Tillerson calling him a ”fucking moron”). The reason things are different this time is that another set of people are running the show, and they’ve realized that including old establishment Republicans, that have to at least pretend to be serious members of society, would have been a barrier to their agenda.
Turning the judiciary red across the country is especially not something you can attribute to Trump. It’s been a systematic effort by the Republicans (and adjacent organizations such as the Heritage Foundation) over the span of decades. He just happened to be in the position to make the appointments.
Sure, to some extent. Trump is an extreme outlier though, at least on the first two. And my main point was mainly that he doesn’t have anything else.
> Obama, Reagan, Clinton were the same, no?
Again, to some degree. Obama and Clinton especially were also shrewd politicians and had skills and strengths in addition to the attributes mentioned above.
Now, an elected official friend who is a former teacher is fond of saying the following: when people get elected, they come with three tiers of knowledge. There's what they know personally - their career field, maybe their hobby, maybe they are ex-military, etc. Then there's secondary: something they observed in a parent or spouse. Finally, there's everything else. In any given session - legislative, congressional, etc, there are going to be thousands of complicated topics thrown at these people, where the issues are way outside their wheelhouse. The best politicians are the ones who not only are really good at synthesizing information, but they surround themselves with quality policy staff - that is, they build a good team to overcome their own lack of background.
But in saying what I did, in no way did I imply politicians are "attention seekers in Congress who make outrageous statements to keep their names in the headlines", because that's not a description of what a sociopath is, as sociopaths can be quiet, calculating people.
It's not necessarily bad to be a sociopath, we need them in politics to be sure.
I cannot understand at all the complete lack of self respect he must have, solely for the acquisition of power.
The rest retired or got primaried.
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. Vance (on Trump)
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. Vance
- J.D. VanceDonald Trump "is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."
I don't know what those are. I'm sure they're whatever you think they are.
Even though it really kills the joke when you have to explain it, I'm guessing there are generational and national barriers to getting that reference.
I was comparing Donald Trump to Raymond Shaw[0]. You can assume I'm doing so facetiously or you can assume I'm serious. I'm not sure myself.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_(1962...
Those aren't leaders, quite the opposite, nothing but typical Trump-like non-leaders disgracing leadership positions.
>those 18 people are just random folks
OTOH if you picked 18 random patriotic Americans, odds are none would be that far below average at defending what normal Americans have always held dear.
Every President surrounds themselves with people who are aligned with their policy platforms. For some reason, Trump is the one President where suddenly it's an issue.
Trump doesn't give a shit about policy. He doesn't know anything about it and can't be bothered to learn.
Its just a viral racist corrupt scream all the way down.
Because Trump is the first president whose hirelings
1. Used Signal to violate laws requiring retention of communication 2. Got caught by incompetently inviting a journalist to their high security chat?
I strongly recommend it. Not because of this context, but because it's a fabulous movie with an amazing cast.
Trump beings people on, they are yes men.
Trump fires people, he doesn’t like people who disagree with him?
Which is it?
Take Former AG Jeff Sessions. He was a yes man but also when he did absolute bare minimum legally by recusing himself Trump fired him for insufficient loyalty
How likely is it that all 18 of those people were accessing from mobile operating systems with no known working exploit chain? I would say pretty unlikely.
each Android vendor has a completely random fork of AOSP with who knows what kernel patches, out-of-tree drivers, unremovable apps and customizations. you're trusting an enchilada of your mobile carrier, Google, Samsung/OnePlus/whoever, plus all their vendors.
Android can be highly secure. the NSA's Fishbowl project used vanilla AOSP + SELinux + IPSec on closely scrutinized hardware to make a phone that can be used for Secret text messages. the cheap prepaid phone you buy at T-Mobile is not that.
> each Android vendor has a completely random fork of AOSP with who knows what kernel patches, out-of-tree drivers, unremovable apps and customizations. you're trusting an enchilada of your mobile carrier, Google, Samsung/OnePlus/whoever, plus all their vendors.
That cuts both ways though. Any exploit for iPhone works on a lot of high value targets. An exploit for one android phone may well not apply to another. If we're talking about state actors, well, probably both are compromised, but the iPhone would be the priority IMO.
Like what is wrong with you that this is your reaction to something so serious?
More seriously, having worked in an undisclosed defence company, we were told that we would be prosecuted if we did this. There were many many security controls in place that prevented this from happening on top of the threat.
There aren't many comparable breaches to this one. The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business. In that case, the FBI investigated and declined to bring charges, under the expectation that a jury would be unlikely to render a guilty verdict.
Okay, fine. But the FBI investigated and laid out the facts.
My fear is that the current administration sees this as a PR problem. No, this was an operational failure. We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
We should expect the FBI to investigate this, too. But I worry the facts are too inconvenient for even that level of accountability.
Why would any FBI agent take a risk on investigating anyone potentially in current or future administrations? They'll get fired later when the political winds change.
"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.
> through gross negligence
"Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johns...
"Donald Trump widens war on legal industry with order targeting Jenner & Block" - https://www.ft.com/content/4f1aca93-62b5-419f-9182-a3a10bbe7...
"Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm's decision to give in to Trump's demands" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/legal-...
"Trump’s crackdown on top law firms spreads to Congress" - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/retribution-big-law...
"The person predicted the impact could extend beyond Congress: “If you’re Google or Meta or Apple – you’re thinking, ‘Do I really want to use these firms?’ That could make it harder to work with the White House...."
These are all smart people, so it boggles the mind to wonder how they can install a totalitarian regime without knowing the next two steps in the playbook.
I have learned about it this week.
https://gingrich360.com/2025/03/18/an-intolerable-judicial-d...
Obviously the dude had a lot of good ideas, but just grabbing anything he said and acting like it's gospel is flawed for dare I say a pretty glaring reason...
His flaws certainly belie such an assertion.
I'm saying that what Jefferson did was to remove problematic judges.
Congress had, has, and will have the power to reshape the federal judiciary as they choose. They can erase all courts below the supreme, and they can add or remove justices to the highest court as they choose (excepting present members, which are lifetime). Thus the saying "pack the court."
To challenge an executive that has friends in congress is a dangerous proposition for a federal judge.
It could end badly.
This implies that the courts cannot be an effective check and balance on the other branches. Aren't they meant to be?
It's always been controversial whether a court can disparage a law of broad application or impugn the president directly. The "effectiveness" of those functions was always a little speculative.
Lower courts typically deal with questions of fact and how they intersect with questions of law; higher courts (appeals courts and Supreme Court) typically deal with questions of law (ambiguity/interpretation) exclusively. Courts as an institution don't serve a "truth-finding function" so much as a "law-ambiguity removing function".
> disparage > impugn
Everyone seems focused on whether a court has the right to, like, insult the president personally. But that's not really the important part of what they're doing. They _of course_ have the right to question whether the law allows what the president is doing -- and questioning this is not disparagement or impugning.
Jefferson wrote that making judges the ultimate deciders of law would “place
us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
I also hesitate why anyone would want a 360 degree view of Newt Gingrich. In real life or otherwise. /s
Clinton fared poorly under Democratic control of the house in his first two years, which was lost in the midterms.
Clinton prospered with Gengrich, and the .com era occurred under their aegis.
Some bad decisions were made by them, no doubt.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/newt-gi...
It is advocated by both sides, to this day.
The obvious case in modern point is Schumer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/23/chuck-schume...
This is why bothsidism is ridiculous. Both sides are the same! Both are accusing the other one of something wrong! Oh, it does not matter than one is lying and other is saying the truth.
The capable adults from the 45th administration are gone because they were too responsible. You can see what happens when you draw from a pool of nothing but drooling sub-80s.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03/26/us/trump-news
> “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth wrote in the chat. “1345: Trigger Based F-18 Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
If I were a potential "target terrorist" and this chat had leaked before the strikes, I'd make damned sure I wasn't at my "known location" that day.
https://apnews.com/article/tulsi-gabbard-assad-syria-trip-dn...
> “Her response was, ‘How do you know it was Assad and Russia and not ISIS?’” Mustafa recalled of the exchange. “Ludicrous question: ISIS doesn’t have airplanes.” Henning, the spokeswoman for the Trump transition, denied the exchange occurred.
> Two years later, she echoed similar doubts about the Trump administration’s assessment that the Assad regime used sarin gas to attack civilians. A United Nations panel and numerous other foreign governments came to the same conclusion.
https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-putin-intelligence-...
> “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter at the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
> Gabbard’s remarks about Russia haven’t gone unnoticed in Moscow, where state-run media have praised her and even jokingly referred to her as a Russian agent. An article published Friday in RIA Novosti, a major Russian state-controlled news agency, called Gabbard “superwoman” and noted her past appearances on Russian TV, claiming that Ukrainian intelligence views her as “probably an agent of the Russian special services.”
What? That's simply not true even by a long shot. In no way shape or form is she condoning anything by being willing to engage with someone non-violently.
Go read my other response. I've quoted Tulsi talking about her trip to Syria. She's trying to find a way to end suffering. I'm not sure you really understand how much damage our own government has done to people and how we appear to others. Gabbard has more courage than you'll ever know.
> Maybe my morals just make me ill-suited to meet murderers (in a non-official capacity nonetheless).
So you're a pacifist. War is war. I'm not defending Assad I'm reminding you that people and countries do horrible things in war on both sides. The US, the atomic bomb, missiles from the sky in the middle east, collateral damage, killing families of terrorists. I think you'd have a hard time if you tried to apply your moral framework to "the good guys".
Painful as it may be, there are valid moral frameworks where ending suffering may be more important, immediate, and urgent than refusing to acknowledge another state's leader because they're horrible.
IDK... I don't have strong enough hatred in my soul to condemn someone for "meeting with a dictator" if they think there might be a path to end suffering. Honestly to me that sounds like someone with courage to do what's necessary to make a difference.
>
Gabbard said her trip included stops in Aleppo and Damascus, Syria’s capital. She also visited Beirut during the trip, which began in mid-January. Gabbard said she also met with refugees, Syrian opposition leaders, widows and family members of Syrians fighting alongside groups like al-Qaeda, and Syrians aligned with the Assad regime.
Gabbard said that the U.S. has “waged wars of regime change” in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Yet each has resulted “in unimaginable suffering, devastating loss of life, and the strengthening of groups like al-Qaeda” and the Islamic State group, she said.
“My visit to Syria has made it abundantly clear,” Gabbard said. “Our counterproductive regime change war does not serve America’s interest, and it certainly isn’t in the interest of the Syrian people.”
>
THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT THE LEFT HAS BEEN SAYING FOR DECADES. We need to get our hands our of other wars and stop causing suffering in peoples/cultures/nations we don't understand.
But oh no because she's willing to work with Trump and not against him she's a filthy fucking traitor. Your kind of rhetoric is what makes me sick.
Wait, there's more!! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...
How much of the administration, for how long, and for what, is using hackable systems and without mandated audit trails for protected communications? Whether external hackers are already successfully snooping, or internal cover-ups are happening of ongoing corruption, both are deeply problematic, and can be happening in parallel to stupid leaks like this. Likewise, we can't even investigate and cleanup properly because these people are illegally deleting the forensic data for their illegal and insecure actions.
It's not even a surprise. Ex: It's already pretty well documented to embarrassing extents like the president flushing official documents down toilets and clogging them. Ex: The admins use of signal was a thing in the first term as well. The only new thing afaict is the public and checks-and-balances people have the evidence in front of them of illegal use when accepting the lies and criminality.
This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.
Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.
We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.
Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.
Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?
Now did they investigate it? Probably not.
What's interesting to me is that personal phones were not seized for forensic examination though.
Were the phones hacked by foreign agents? What other uses was signal used for?
Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The demarcation line between the two is when the charges are filed in federal court.
Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016. Not because she committed any crime, but because they wouldn't likely get a conviction at trial.
No, they don't.
> The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.
They investigate before there are charges.
> Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The FBI is part of the DoJ, but there aren't charges until a prosecutor—not an FBI agent—either gets a grand jury to return an indictment or files a criminal information (the latrer only an option for minor offenses or if the defendant waives indictment, usually as part of a plea bargain.) Prosecution isn't a separate thing from charges, it is what charges are.
> Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016.
No, famously Comey announced that the FBI recommended that no charges be filed. Like I said, you have it backwards: FBI makes recommendations, federal prosecutors decide to charge, or not.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-recommends-no-charges-f...
“FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.”
Have you ever seen law and order? They explain it succinctly in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk
Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...
One possible explanation is that it happens all the time.
Signal prevents what should be official government communications from being recorded. If it's recorded it can be investigated.
This is absolutely false, or as the kids call it, "misinformation".
A 3 second Google search confirms:
100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". An additional 2,093 emails were retroactively designated confidential by the State Department.
The whole issue with her emails is she purposely never labeled anything so as to have plausible deniability.
"But here emails" was just republicans doing what they always do and pretending to be angry over mild stuff while giving own people pass over big stuff.
I think a decent case can be made that one rounds up to the other, but I guess that case seems more like an argument to be made than a fact to be corrected.
I'm not going to defend classifying embarrassing information because it's well -- embarrassing. But the established trend is to classify information "just to be safe" and let someone else make the declassifying decisions, particularly someone that's not you.
There was a weird issue with Wikileaks in that publicly released information was still considered classified, and any documents must be still treated as such.
Was that silly, yes. This led to a weird issue where journalists and members of the public had more access to certain classified documents than people holding clearances.
That thing where one side is given unbelievable benefit of the doubt that literally ignores what was happening or is happening is not healthy.
"The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use."
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-staffer...
Here's the important relevant quote:
"It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate
for work purposes. Provided that any decisions that are
made are also recorded through formal channels. So
those were procedures that were implemented. My staff
implemented those processes," Ratcliffe said.
"My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message
group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not
include classified information," he added.
"My communications weren't classified" — my is doing some work there.
But honestly most of the people in the group will be loyal to the US regardless of leader's political affiliation.
But what they do ask is that classified information remain secret -- particularly if you're in harms way.
'My communications weren't classified at the time I made them.'
If you're in that intelligence community, you know exactly what is classified and what is not. I could imagine some information being so secretive it's not written down -- but instead passed verbally in person.
If a CIA agent has intelligence on an Israeli operation, it's classified, regardless of whether it was written down or not.
Then there is another group of consumers of this story, with the same access to all of the same evidence, and all of the same first person confirmations, who confidently declare the argument that this might be illegal null and void because Joe Biden allowed the CIA to use signal, and are persuaded away from accepting all of that evidence by articles with that contain such gems as "what the media wont tell you about the Atlantic hit piece", "Democrats talking points on this story quickly unraveled", and "help us continue to expose the lefts desperate attempts to manufacture scandals".
How can propaganda be so effective that people lose the skill of object permanence?
So, was he added to the conversation inadvertently, or was it deliberate?
On the question of whether the use of the application was negligent, well, that is now moot.
We need to stop thinking these guys are playing 3D chess when they try to shove the pieces up their nose
They also got a loyalty test with their own people. Everyone is saying "not my problem" and accepting no responsibility. They've passed that test.
Then the final loyalty test is of their voters. When this first broke, the script was "Oof. This is bad. Heads will roll because of this." When it became apparent that, no, heads will not roll, the script amongst them changed. "This doesn't matter. Why would it matter? Everyone uses insecure things and makes mistakes. Why did the journalist embarrass our country?" It's very obvious that the breaking point with their base is very far away, assuming there is one.
And the final result is seeing whether there will be consequences. A small time guy can get pinched for this and the president and everyone else will remain completely void of responsibility no matter what. But it's pretty obvious that even a small time guy won't be facing consequences.
So they've gained something very valuable from this: the realization that there really are no consequences. They're going to keep pushing things like this and they'll get bigger and bigger each time. And each time it sets a new standard for a tolerable level of bad. And any time someone supportive of them starts to think "maybe this isn't good", they'll be quick to rush in and say "it's a nothingburger, just like the last thing they were whining about." And they'll fall back in line.
These people are just brutes lumbering through a government the fully control now, smashing and doing whatever they want. There's no 4D chess.
It's a win on government efficiency I guess (no more year long investigations). But also, this is clearly not the first time they used Signal, and it won't be the last.
Couldn't every whistleblower and double agent from now on just make sure to do their leaking over signal, and therefore receive the magical immunity your logic claims signal usage provides?
Move against those that approved its use.
That would be an interesting turn of events.
And you've simply incorporated this as additional straw for your strawman.
Does this mornings additional confirmation in the form of messages including times, planes, and weapons further solidify your feelings that this is all Bidens fault?
"Clinton has said that she never used her personal email to send information that was marked classified at the time, although some of her emails had been retroactively classified.
Comey says that's not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification."
"Another 2,000 emails have been retroactively classified since they were sent, Comey said."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/05/484785586...
Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.
It's absolutely a reasonable stance. However, the rules aren't reasonable. For instance, as someone who held a clearance at the time, discussing/disseminating the Snowden leaks that were published in national news was considered a violation.
The people in the chat group included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, various other Trump administration officials and aides and notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred.
The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications.
Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in.
Time will tell how this buttery Signals chat plays out .. it's certainly given other many other countries more fuel to ridicule the USofA, it's hard to believe these clowns are our partners in global "intelligence".
You have weird taste in men.
Potential penalty of death as well.
Also lets not forget those messages had a 4w expiary date.
There will be no accountability, consequences, or operational changes because the American people (a plurality of them anyway) voted for this. I like how people are even bothering to bring up the risk of prosecution, as if Trump wouldn't just pardon the people involved anyway.
Look, I am as disgusted as you are, but I continue to be impressed/disgusted by the neverending levels of shamelessness shown by Trump and his cronies:
1. Trump is now somehow blaming the reporter for this, calling him a "sleazebag".
2. Probably doesn't need repeating, but all the chants about "lock her up" against Hillary Clinton were due to her supposed mishandling of classified information. Yeah, waiting to hear all the outrage from the right over this 10x more egregious example.
3. I still continue to be awed by Hegseth railing against DEI because it's "anti-merit", as I can't think of an ass clown less qualified to be Sec of Defense.
Nothing will change unless the American people, at large, decide to punish those at the ballot box who exhibit these behaviors, and so far they have not been willing to do that.
I'm somewhat politically conservative, and I still cannot make any sense of the plurality that voted Trump into office again. I really wonder if I'm in some kind of echo chamber that prevents me from understanding their perspective.
I mean, I understand the ‘burn the world down’ perspective. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive.
Now, I’m not replying to you about the morality of what happened or to tell my opinion of what is right and what is wrong.
But do you honestly believe the president is held to the same standard as you?
Would it shock you that they aren’t?
Levied on the Undesirables only.
I am. Throw the book at them.
From TFA.
The discussion itself wasn't transacting classified documents as such. But as Goldberg makes clear, information of both general sensitivity and immediate tactical significance was disclosed.
Now Europe “accidentally saw” what the American powers were saying and it’s going to influence them.
I’m not at all sold that this was some ball that was dropped.
You are confuse yourself, THEY ARE THE LAW
these are the most powerful guys in the nation, who decide to catch who and whom??? these guys who decide that not the other way around
The administration is also claiming that there was no confidential information in the conversation, which I think is certainly debatable, but the rest of the story seems overblown to me.
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
Which says:
Organizations may already have these best practices in place, such as secure communication platforms1 and multifactor authentication (MFA) policies. In cases where organizations do not, apply the following best practices to your mobile devices.
Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps.
Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by CISA.
Moreover, the advice doesn't apply to organizations that have their own best practices in place, which the organizations in question certainly do. So the question isn't what CISA recommends it's what the CIA, DoD, Department of State, etc. recommend.
Saying that CISA approved Signal (and, in right-wing sources, saying "Biden administration CISA") is an attempt to minimize and distract.
They shouldn't have been texting classified information. Full stop.
[0] https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact list?).
I just checked on Android - if you try to add someone to a group chat, it shows their name and profile pic.
One potential Signal-side wrinkle is that it allows you to add people to a group chat who are in another chat you're in, but who aren't in your contacts list. There are strangers I was apparently at a dinner party with years ago who are eligible to be added to a group chat. If Jeffrey Goldberg has his Signal profile name set to JG and he wasn't in Mike Waltz's phone with a more specific name, that could lead to this mistake.
If you have empathy for civilians regardless, the United States bombed a civilian residence and killed many bystanders to get at a Houthi official engaged in genocide prevention. This is a war crime.
Signal's insistence on punting on the trust/identity problem is a Signal problem IMO, particularly when its advocates make such a fuss (when it suits them) about being a properly end-to-end cryptosystem and not just a toolbox of algorithms. Most of the systems it's competing with make at least some attempt at providing a chain of trust so you don't have to individually verify everyone you want to talk to.
US Trade Representative
Two things that are really troublesome. The first, as Josh Marshall of TPM points out, "No one on that chat asked 'Why are we doing this on Signal?'" which suggests that it isn't the first time Signal was used for 'off books' stuff and that perhaps there are many such conversations. The second is that the conversation was set up while one of the participants was in the Kremlin waiting to talk to Putin. So either 'Kremlin Free WiFi' or the local cell tower providing connectivity?
Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own problems.
So yes, tools for Government communications don't have this problem, hell even Microsoft Teams on their US cloud get better protection than this.
I don't think we need to ponder so hard about this.
This administration is headed by a man who kept stolen TS/SCI national secrets in a bathroom at his house.
A fish rots from the head.
> "Came from outside, don't trust this"
Or just let someone look over your shoulder?
Similar issues have come up in the UK about Boris Johnson et al using Whatsapp etc during Covid, and one of the things they said in their defence did have some value - at least in relation to the idea of unminuted discussions.
ie these chat's are what used to be corridor/bar/cafe conversations - ie unminuted discussions are old as government - it's just they are now happening on various messaging apps rather than in person, at much faster pace, and with more people involved.
So I think it's a mistake to think its reasonable that all discussions should be recorded - the real question here is how to get the right balance - and make sure any decision making meetings are recorded - rather than the chat around the decision.
The way it worked in the past - was to get a proper decision you needed all the people in the same room - and so it was automatically minuted as it was an official meeting ( but not the chat at coffee before the meeting ) - now it's possible to get people together virtually that distinction is blurred.
Not sure what the answer is - but just saying it's probably unreasonable to expect all communications to be recorded - people need space to float ideas, or bitch like normal people - however on the other hand it is essential key meetings are minuted - not just for transparency - but for the study of history.
Of course, none of this excuses the failure to verify the identities of everybody in their chat, the choice to use a (probably) unvetted app on a (probably) unvetted personal device, or any other of a number of basic opsec rules that should be obvious to anybody who is vested with the authority to order an airstrike on the other side of the planet.
However, it seems more plausible to me that Jeffrey Goldberg is in someone's contact list from previous on-purpose leaks (to control narrative, etc, typical "anonymous sources say" stuff) - and was accidentally added to this group.
It's very likely that senior government officials have a phone with journalists saved in the contacts. It's easy to imagine why there are rules against using the same phone for secret war stuff, yet here we are.
Is that so shocking? I watch often some forums on reddit related to combat footage, not frequently but enough to see various patterns. Before houthis started attacking shipping lanes, there were tons of videos of them kicking ass of Saudi military but way more often some subsaharan African mercenaries in their uniforms. Like, really badly kicking ass, smart ambushes, devastating results even on heavy machinery. The opposite side had almost nothing.
Then with change of this, the tone and content turned 180 degrees. Almost always absolutely precise laser guided bomb strikes even if for 1-2 guys seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of them popping up all the time (to the tune of few every single day). Always titled cca 'Saudi air force doing XYZ'. Like sure, if you are clueless and don't know state of their army, their discipline, level of training and so on you can believe that.
I didn't believe this since the switch was sharp, US is simply flying there for quite some time, together with Saudi air force. TBH I don't care, just sharing observations. No way we can know hard facts obviously, but its easy to connect those very few dots. A bit of failure from opsec point of view - if you do this stuff, at least keep it secret and not broadcasting to whole world so politicians can keep big smiles and grand statements, at least for clueless civilians who barely know where Yemen lies on the map.
What others write it matches my observation - “Houthi PC small group”, seemingly short term group about specific attack. US attacks themselves are already happening for a year and something.
I did not believe there was any way this was done accidentally...
Trump sent his golf buddy Waltz to negotiate with Putin and he came back brainwashed with Russian propaganda. Russian psyops is either really good or some of these people in the administration are just morons.
Dunno about Waltz, seems like he is himself quite puzzled about how Goldberg ended up in the group, denied any connection with him and called the Atlantic journalist 'scum'. He also spoke with his buddy Elon and they've got the best minds looking at it right now.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5214186-waltz-at...
Maybe he's better at handling firearms than mobile chat apps, dunno. The Chinese, which he dislikes, are definitely not going to have a hard time with people like him running the show. I read they were trying to recruit some of the laid off federal workers.
If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
Or, he's got other channels that work better.
All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy
Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.
To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:
Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.
Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
Chevron is about the statute saying something vague like "a term in a consumer credit contract is void if it is oppressive" and then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene. That is contrary to the rule of law. If there is a vagueness, that should be filled by a court supplying an interpretation and that precedent is then established. Law should be stable and predictable.
Remember the original Chevron case was based on the EPA changing its interpretation of "source" of air pollution under the Clean Air Act 1963 to make it much narrower. There was no statutory power for it to do so. Nothing in the Act authorised it. It unilaterally changed its interpretation of the law, and the Court said "that is fine, it is ambiguous, you decide what the law is and as long as it is a reasonable interpretation that is fine". Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things could literally change day to day, but there were established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures required posting reasons for the change, a notice published in the register, the chance for people to comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed without notice and without any reason given they got blocked from making the change.
See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions. Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day to the next.
Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is another issue I can understand. And I am not interested enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an opinion on that.
They don't have the power to reinterpret their laws. They can repeal laws and pass new laws, but interpretation is up to the courts, if they don't like the interpretation the court gives to a law then their recourse is to pass a new law.
> So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
The problem is firstly that the executive isn't supposed to have the power to make or repeal laws, "delegating" it to them breaks the separation of powers, and secondly allowing a law to be "reinterpreted" rather than rewritten breaks the whole system of precedence that the rule of law depends on.
I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed" and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people" and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.
> If there is a vagueness
There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just based on which word is emphasized.
It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence has some amount of vagueness and that people will be interpreting its meaning.
It was about who interprets what a law an agency administers means.
Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean. Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.
Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.
That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:
1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.
2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.
3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.
This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices, for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
The majority of SCOTUS decisions are unanimous.
And as the article says the courts have been increasingly looking at narrowly scoped cases that are less precedent changing.
Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a journalist, and the public has a right to know.
National security or institutional trust was not damaged by the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians now running our military.
The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.
Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).
The information was obtained legally and without foresight.
The journalist has an obligation to report the information if it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public policy.
> If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
> Or, he's got other channels that work better.
The Signal chat group was called the “Houthi PC small group.” It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was the main story here, not the specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept confidential.
And I agree with your assessment. Morons...
It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life. Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much bloodshed.
The real story is that he was added to the channel, so it doesn't surprise me that he didn't try to lurk indefinitely. I'm guessing these things are also ad-hoc, so perhaps the well was already dry after the attack?
But this is some truly amateur-hour shit. I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer open source projects than this.
Because those people are likely competent. The problem with hiring mostly yes-men/women is competence is secondary.
I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a future book
David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation
Jeffrey: It's not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—-we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries--there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
From historian Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny, chapter/lesson number one:
> Do not obey in advance.
* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051/on-tyranny-by...
Are you saying it's a crime for someone else to accidentally add you to their chat?
Yes, that would be a crime, but that's not what the original comment said.
> mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications
I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
Clearly being added in error then publishing a bunch of stories in a series would be a crime.
No, that's exactly what I answered: the ramifications increase the longer he stays on, because the longer he stays on the greater chance it is seen as exploiting the error with intent to gain national defense information.
So in your case: Getting added to a random signal chat where you are not exposed to anything? You should be fine. At least it will be very hard to show any intent to violate anything. Though that isn't necessarily true either. E.g. one could imagine Signal usernames belonging to operatives being in that group. And starting to post or investigate those could still get you in legitimate trouble.
And yes, ignorance of the law does not necessarily save one either. But a central point in all prosecutions is some portion of criminal intent
Who complained here that email can't be replaced by messengers, because you can't write long messages there? Here's a counterexample.
In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the safest enemy to be.
Very similar to this case in Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/02/abc-agrees-to-...
The ABC had a public interest duty to publicise everything, instead they left 99% unread and returned the contents to the government.
Pathetic.
2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared already it’s more a countdown I would say. What would be a usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about an immediate event which is going to happen?
Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost certainly classified data?
> 2h is a lot but not that much time
He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the strikes (15 March), not two hours.
There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers.
What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?
You mean the desktop linking feature? If that's considered a vulnerability, then so is being able to chat with someone after getting their public key unverified from an overseas server, the primary mode in which everyone uses it (including the people in this chat, evidently, since no out-of-band key exchange was performed)...
Not to mention the "vulnerability" where you copy the phone's storage and get the key material onto another device to do with what you will, which may be harder or easier depending on the hardware but I'd trust any sufficiently funded security agency to be able to do this for common devices
I agree it could be hardening to allow users/organizations to disable this feature, and also other features such as automatic media decoding and other mechanisms that are trade-offs between security and usability, but simply does not meet the definition of a vulnerability (nobody will assign this a CVE number to track the bug and "resolve" it)
In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?) would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily replaced.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/hackers-exploit-signals-li...
“… the threat actors, including one it's tracking as UNC5792, have resorted to malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will link a victim's account to an actor-controlled Signal instance.”
“ These QR codes are known to masquerade as group invites, security alerts, or legitimate device pairing instructions from the Signal website.”
Also
“ Last week, Microsoft and Volexity also revealed that multiple Russian threat actors are taking advantage of a technique called device code phishing to log into victims' accounts by targeting them via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams.”
Signal could make the pairing attack impossible by eliminating the device pairing feature, but that would also reduce its appeal and harm its mission of bringing secure communication to a broad audience. It could add steps to setting up a group chat and inviting additional members to make it less likely users will invite the wrong person, but that, too would hurt its popularity.
Security is a process and a spectrum, not a binary that can be guaranteed by using a certain product or service.
In that view, Signal is the wrong app to use for US Officials.
Signal probably shouldn't be approved for that purpose because it does trade some foolproofness for convenience. Secure communication should also be limited to dedicated devices, which probably wouldn't have journalists stored in their contacts.
You could see a CIA agent being in Russia needing to use Signal with an informant, e.g. But that wouldn't be the same level of security needed to hold nuclear secrets.
That list of conditions would likely be quite restrictive compared to how we saw it used here. It would certainly include using a dedicated device for classified information, and would forbid taking that device to an unfriendly country. The US government doesn't need to do that though; it already has its own systems for secure communication.
[1] "Putin gave Trump portrait to envoy, Kremlin confirms" - https://thehill.com/policy/international/5212691-putin-trump...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely.
He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
Because these rules and policies are for people that are judged to need them by the person with the authority and responsibility for making the decision.
Policies like these always have a cost and (hopefully) a benefit. Presumably this lead dev judged that the cost vs benefit didn't make sense for themselves but did for others. It's entirely possible they were correct.
https://www.browserstack.com/guide/code-review-benefits
> Code Review enhances the maintainability of the Code. It ensures that multiple people are aware about the code logic and functioning, which makes it easy to maintain in case the original author of the code is unavailable.
The fact that you've been "hacking" for three decades and never considered this isn't something to wear as a badge of honor. As for your absurd straw man about everyone on the team reviewing every line of code, I've never seen one organization that does that.
awareness does not imply understanding :)
If, however, a junior develop is responsible for making a change, but has no authority to make the change, then there is a problem.
If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture and twisted narratives, taking advantage of the erosion of rule of law as a respected concept among the public.
Ethics and morality.
> You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality.
Yes, you can, that's the entire point of ethics and morality.
> The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them.
Well, yes, that's the point of the specific actions being discussed; that doesn't make it impossible to look at them through a lens of ethics and morality, it just makes them look bad through such a lens.
Culture transmission is more effective when followers can emulate leaders — so you’ll have an easier time getting people to obey when your goal is to get them to act the way you do. In this case, you’ll expend less political capital on enforcing your policy regarding code reviews and testing if you adhere to the same policy. (And accordingly, have an easier time avoiding disgrace like public failures if your service.)
If you want to view it purely through the lens of power politics, saving your political capital on issues like this preserves it for things with better rewards — eg, you’ll have an easier time getting your projects approved if your manager isn’t constantly having to deal with the fallout of your policy double standards impacting morale. Or for setting a standard that working fewer hours is acceptable if you’re meeting your quotas — which nobody can dispute you’re doing, as the whole teams is validating that you are.
This kind of petty power game is rarely an optimal exercise of power.
I think when you're the 'architect' or know the full stack very well, to where you fully repl/grok it and occasionally need to do hot patch type work, the former approach is nice. But, my brain has limited memory and time erodes quickly, so I also know when to rely on the latter approach and I try to do it as much as possible
I don't see a problem with it (as long as he can't transfer the blame somewhere else).
Same goes for some “10x developers” who are fast because the rules don’t apply to them. Meanwhile the rules slow everyone else down (yea big surprise he is faster). And everyone else has to clean up after these guys when they get sloppy.
But for me the foundational issue is that my coworkers aren't holding up the bar when reviewing contractor code. And reviewing all the code isn't my job description.
Meanwhile my job description does include maintaining a system my coworkers don't really know anything about, and so I mostly make sure it's tests pass and let me manager know about anything I need to do to it.
Because the goal is to keep risk to a reasonable level, not necessarily minimize it as much as possible.
I rarely commit the same kind of code the full time professional developer do(when bypassing policies).
Typically it is stuff like urgent patch in prod that may not have coverage , or partial long running refactor which breaks existing tests but better to be able merge quickly than keep the branch constantly free of merge conflicts , or experimental exploratory new type of code(new lang , stack whatever )for which we have to yet evolve processes, part of what the lead is supposed to be exploring and so on.
Although In my experience junior leads more often than not abuse their privileges than use it well.
Trump went on about Hillary’s mail and made it a big thing for political points, not because he was particularly caring or didn’t have infamously bad opsec when he got in.
You lead dev trusted himself more than the team. He was probably right.
Edit: Its safe to say that this story involves multiple levels of hypocrisy by the current administration.
But the problem with them being hypocrites in this regard is that it follows from them doing the same thing Hillary did, and in that case the "fair" way to punish them would be the same way she was punished, which is not at all. So I don't see any real accountability ever coming from this beyond maybe trump firing a couple of sacrificial lambs from his administration.
a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was fat-fingered. This seems likely.
b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less blowback risk.
Regarding using Signal in the first place. Yes, this seems like bad opsec, but it's possible that the current admin working groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or foreign agencies. That seems very likely, given the circumstances. In which case, it is still a possible opsec failure, but perhaps a less bad risk than trusting operational security to known adverse agencies. This is the more interesting case, imho, since the assumption on here is largely that these types of coordination should be happening on official government channels. But "government" is not necessarily a unified collective working towards the same goals. If you have a strong suspicion that agents within your own team are acting against your goals, then of course, you have to consider communicating on alternative channels. Whether that's to evade legal restrictions or transparency, like with the Clinton email servers, or to evade sabotage, I'm not judging the ethics, just considering the necessity of truly secure communication.
Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto private devices. The private phones of national security leadership would be prime targets for every hostile intelligence agency in the world. It matters little if the information was encrypted in transit if the host device is compromised.
One would have to be a fool to not trust all of the classified tools and safeguards the US government uses only to then use a commercial app on commercial phones to communicate classified data in public while stateside and abroad. Just the fact that someone could accidentally add an unauthorized person to the chat is but one reason it was crazy for them to do this.
We're 79 days in, and 42% of the policy objectives outlined in the document are complete, with another 15% in progress. Over 50% of the objectives have been actioned within the first 100 days. I've seen general contractors execute on a blueprint slower than this administration.
The policy goals of the ACLU, Clinton Foundation, etc are inputs to the Democratic Party's operations. Why would it be controversial to note that the Heritage Foundations's published policy is similarly an input to the Republican Party's operations?
I'd also note that mentioning George Soros being involved in anything gets condemnation here, so the same thing applies to both sides to at least some extent.
No.
No, no, no.
Most classified information is NOT designated SCI. When classified info was mostly paper, it was placed in GSA approved safes in regular 'ole office buildings. You'd get to work, open your safe, and do your work. Most SIPRNet computers are not in SCIFs.
Heck, you can even mail classified documents via USPS. Confidential and secret documents can be sent registered mail.
"SCIFs are often employed for processing things that are only marked Secret or systems only handling Secret"
No. SCIFs are expensive. They are not built when they are not needed. They are only needed for SCI materials.
Assuming this is true, how did they determine what a "top" government official is? So if you're the SecDef you should use it but not the deputy SecDef? How would this guidance not pertain to all government officials?
What they did is illegal. Any rank and file that did the same would be in prison for a decade, no questions asked.
In general, it seems like you're trying to "3d chess" incompetence into strategy, but try taking a step back and looking at it with clear eyes. This was a bad decision, plain and simple. Nobody is taking responsibility for it, and that makes it worse - these people are in charge of the largest intelligence and war machine on the planet. This is not okay.
As a consequence, any enforcement now would be viewed as extremely selective.
I have been exposed to a lot of classified information in meetings in DC that were supposed to be unclassified. This isn’t an isolated incident, it has been a systemic issue across every administration for as long as I’ve worked in DC.
People should focus less on the incident and more on why this has been normal for decades.
The underlying tension is that doing things the official way is extremely slow and speed matters. There is a longstanding bias toward taking more risks in terms of information exposure because being slow carries its own significant risks. Speed of decision making is critical and that has proven to be impossible if every interaction has to happen inside a SCIF. It is a tension the intelligence community is still grappling with.
IIUC, the "rank and file" go to prison for violating their NDA. At the highest level these people are appointed and don't have an NDA which is why senators / representatives can leak without punishment.
Here's a pretty good order of operations when your policy breaks the law or is so odious as to feel the need to hide it from other duly elected representatives in government:
1. Stop breaking the fucking law.
The rule of law matters. Even if it doesn't matter to you or Trump.
If you're talking about fear of leakers, the response to that is to tighten the distribution of information and start a counterintelligence investigation.
In any case the simple risk calculus is, what is the risk of adversaries getting a hold of this information and causing grave and lasting damage to national security and death vs the risk of political rivals leaking something. Pretty simple decision there and one that any cabinet member should get right.
So why should we default to the position of not trusting those systems when every previous administration has used it without issus.
Russian operated puppets have been spreading similar stuff everywhere they can. When MAGA ppl do something stupid, they’re instantly there flat out calling them lefties and communists, etc. to shift blame, confuse readers and devolve meaningful discussions into name-calling and pointless debate.
There is no evidence, reporting etc that says the government has deliberately compromised the government’s own secure systems. And for what purpose is beyond me.
1. Trump’s team was spied on by the FBI. 2. Government employees have access to government systems.
Conclusion? There is a possibility that Trump’s team again be spied upon through the government systems and consequently have sabotage done upon them. Therefore, avoid government systems as much as possible.
Calling this unfounded conspiracy theory is just running away from this very straightforward and simple argument.
Also, is there proof that these government systems are completely secure? Without that proof, why should they be using those systems? (He who controls the null hypothesis and all..)
This is a phenomenal level of stupidity - to use illegal channels of communication because of the bad vibes they are feeling from other people?
Did it help? How many adversary spy agencies has duplicate signal accounts for these officials and see all of the communication live?
I think some foreign leaders probably are reading summaries of these messages in complete disbelief and amusement.
No one in the Trump administration has come out and said the secure systems can’t be trusted.
They replace “ideologically compromised SCIFs” with…… 18 separate iOS devices that I’m sure are on 18 separate OS/app versions and device postures and…
Got news for you - want to compromise e2e encryption and Signal? You do it via what they did. So no, they are not correct.
This is an abysmal mistake on the big stage for a bunch of new people on the job. That it is the intelligence community makes it feel so much worse.
At minimum, Mike Waltz is retired special ops, Rubio has had high-level clearance for ages from his time in the Senate, same for Gabbard in the House. None of them responded "Hey, this is poor op-sec and illegal, perhaps take this to an approved messaging service?"
Basically a journalist was added to a discussion group of high ranking politicians.
This journalist is well known within those circles and has plenty of access to those people regardless.
The conversation may have been war plans, but the action is pretty uncontroversial across both parties, and went off without a problem so the impact of the leak was nil.
Seems like a great topic for making political hay, but twins that a mistake that can be easily corrected.
I can't imagine having my personal secure commentary being put out into the public and I don't have national security under my belt.
If you new that Signal was secretly a front by the CIA/NSA then you'd feel pretty comfortable using it.
European governments do the same but with WhatsApp.
Jesus Christ, this is dumb. Using a civilian app with civilian phones is literally the best way to get spied on, by either "your own" or foreign agencies. These people are going to get us all killed in a nuclear first strike.
Not sure how leaking state secrets is risking nuclear annihilation - unless they invite Putin or Xi mistakenly in their Signal Group and plan to bomb Moscow or Beijing but the coziness of the current administration with these 2 countries is certainly not making this scenario realistic at all.
Instead the reality is likely more boring: they just accelerate American decline
Please don’t reassure yourself by thinking that putting total incompetents in power is making anyone safer.
I don't see how this would work. If you're the leaker, do you just add the journalist to the group yourself? How are you going to explain that? I think there are more anonymous ways to leak stuff than adding someone else to the group chat. Or does signal not show who added someone?
I am reading it now.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/signal-app-owned-china-it-safe-use...
Edit: nothing to see here.
"So, is Signal App owned by China? The answer is no... Signal is run by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit based in San Francisco... Amidst this controversy, it's crucial to remember that Signal's roots are firmly planted on American soil, dispelling any notion of Chinese ownership."
Obviously, Signal is not meant for this sort of thing, so it has no reason for such a feature. It’s not a failing of Signal, but it’s not fit for this purpose.
The bigger security problem is that it was being run on devices that evidently weren't limited to secure communication tasks (such devices wouldn't have a journalist in their contacts). That suggests at least some people were using personal phones, which seems like a terrible idea.
but of course, this lot thinks the existing government is all corrupt / deepstate.
It was Mike Waltz who invited Jeff Goldberg to connect on Signal. It seems inordinately unlikely that he would have been uninvolved if it was an intentional leak.
You can debate the seriousness of this sometimes. When it comes to impending military action though, revealing when and where US personnel will be conducting an operation in the future, there really is no debate. This is gravely serious.
Once upon a time, I was visited very forcefully by the FBI at 0600. They used a battering ram to gain access to my domicile.
During the "interview" that took place later that morning, they requested some information from me. I told them that the information was contained in Signal conversations between two recipients, and the messages in question have "disappearing messages" turned on. tldr; the messages are no longer available.
Relevant parts of conversation that followed:
me: "Do you have signal?"
agent: "I have it on my phone if that's what you mean."
me: "No, do you HAVE it - as in, do you have access to messages sent between other parties?"
agent: "If we do, I am unaware of it, and we certainly don't 'have it' with regard to this matter."
Take that for what it's worth.... my takeaway was that they(the FBI at least) have not compromised Signal. This was late in 2019 for context.
The other takeaway...be careful who you trust. That all happened because I trusted someone I shouldn't have.
If they did have some kind of collection capability around Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it on you.
I've always thought the exact same thing. The harm was ~800m USD to a private company. Sounds big, but it's nothing compared to actual state sponsored anything.
Just to add some more (possibly useful) context from the encounter....
The FBI was not able to unlock many LUKS secured devices - at all. They had zero success over approx 30 days, and had to explore alternative methods to obtain key material.
The FBI was not able to decrypt blowfish2 (ie vim -x).
The FBI was not able to decrypt ccrypt secured files (ie aes256).
IF they can decrypt stuff, they'll only use it when it's has an actual benefit beyond a conviction and the keys are truly inaccessible. (e.g., person is dead, the keys are in an enemy state HSM, etc.)
Like, do you think they did the same thing with multiple journalists in an attempt to see who would publish and who would keep their mouths shut?
Bear in mind, when you join a Signal group you don't see the conversation history from before you arrived, only the live updates that take place during the time you're a member. Also, anyone in the group can view the list of group members and receives notifications about people being added to/removed from/leaving the group.
„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
(Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)
WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top Secret.
Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
General Henry Miller made public comments about the secret date of the Allied invasion of Normandy in May 1944. He was a personal friend of Eisenhower. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to the US in disgrace. He wasn't court-martialed.
Not justifying Trump administration but just seems like a whole different level of stakes.
The level of potential impact, expectations and repercussions are very very different between the two. He should absolutely get fired because you cant do that sort of thing at that position - but equating the two is disingenuous. The general should have been court-martialed in that situation.
Back then he said she should be put in jail but now he is downplaying it. How can Americans take this guy seriously is beyond my mind.
Now, how secure and backdoor-proof that encryption is, is an other story..
Also, I haven't followed the email thing, but emails are by design insecure, so one should hope stuff like this was not discussed over emails (regardless server..)
Perhaps a better answer is to separate accountability from the executive branch, possibly:
* Provide journalistic publication businesses super first amendment protections that cannot be restricted by a president, but news sources that contain opinion pieces separate from witness testimony and/or third party expert analysis as entertainment, thus restricted from journalistic venues.
* Transfer the justice department to congress. The president can still appoint the attorney general. The president should have no ability to determine criteria or persons for investigation or denial thereof.
If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless others (and presumably so would countless others be in the future).
If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using her personal phone).
At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc). E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised. This is why we have SCIFs.
There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications. Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-critical plans.
In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely justified.
The reason is simple: 95% of people would just set-up the same PIN anyway.
In unrelated news: Password reuse is rampant: nearly half of observed user logins are compromised
https://blog.cloudflare.com/password-reuse-rampant-half-user...
My prediction is, given the way the narrative is shifting to digging in their heels and insisting they did nothing wrong, the lesson they are learning from all this is that they should have hid their activity better. Nothing will happen to them, they will continue with impunity, and they'll just be more careful about not inviting outsiders. I suspect this isn't the last leaked top-secret group chat we'll see.
https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-t...
Therefore even if you found evidence that a small subset of the members held national security worse than Hillary secured her emails, (in this case, leaking a Yemen bombing attack 2 hours before it happened), there’s nothing left for voters to vote on.
The only thing far-left activists can do to change this administration is to wait 4 years for Harris, Hillary, or Bernie to run again. But they’ll need a winning platform to run on. Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
All this left-leaning activism is doing is helping other liberals lose even more of their sanity than they’ve already lost. One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people, let alone other American people.
Given he started a riot to interrupt congressional proceedings and tried to insert fake electors in 2021, I don't have much hope that he won't try something in 2028.
> there’s nothing left for voters to vote on
Oh really, so MAGA will just disappear in 2028? The point is to expose the incompetence and the harm that hiring loyalists over qualified people introduces.
> Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
I don't think populism is a good strategy, personally. It always devolves into a "us vs them" tribalism battle, where you're going against the "elite" but the "elite" is a moving target and not set in stone. Lots of conspiracies arise and you're less effective as a bloc.
> One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people
What specifically do you think showed that they didn't care? Incumbents lost globally due to inflation from COVID and the voter population misplacing the blame. I think Dems could have done better before the election (e.g. Joe should've dropped out sooner) but to say that they lost on policy is a bit asinine.
1) he dies in office (of natural causes)
Or
2) the republicans win in 2028 and a different republican president is sworn in.
Hell even if he just chokes on a pretzel I'm sure they'll blame the radical left
They cant afford giving away power now. Just in the last three months, there were multiple very clear law breaking acts. Musk is giving government contracts to himself. They do not worry about these, because they do not intend to give out power.
no party is going to pass the filibuster, so it doesn't even matter what happens in the house, we're still going to be getting budget reconciliations, and post offices renamed as the only things passed.
partisan areas aren't going to flip. the only 'solution' anyone will come up with is another runner-up from the same party.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/james-malone...
What's his endgame now ? If Trump is no longer in power, even if Musk doens't land directly in prison, I have a hard time imagining the new government collaborating in any way with him or his companies. And they sure behave like this is not an issue.
I would put my chips on (an attempt at) avoiding the duty to keep records.
“Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/signalgate-violating-...
(…maybe his article should be a top level HN post)
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-officials-warn-egypts-m...
https://www.jns.org/israel-challenges-egypt-on-secret-sinai-...
Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
what I noticed is that even at the highest level people think prayers can be effective:
> JD Vance
> I will say a prayer for victory
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-...
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And today, confirmation from Trump:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
Question: how many people here who are concerned about this behavior have actually contacted their senators or representatives to voice an opinion on this?
There are lots of other places to discuss politics.
Is this the forum for this type of news?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html...
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-government approved device certainly is news, but not necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate it.
I often see this comment, but there are never any sources provided. Any links to share?
Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than the highest ranking us gov officials.
weird chat, surprised Waltz was active in planning strikes. 18 confidantes - closer knit cabinet from internal coms. was under the impression that signal log was leaked to emulate Spinoza's excommunication decree.
I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also -
> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.
And what is?
I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.
But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.
While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
Yeah, Democrats suck too. But you'd have to be extremely uninformed or naive to believe that there's no difference between a party that mostly does things the right way with some occasional missteps (and yes, corruption), and a party that happily, brazenly wears it's corruption on its sleeve and threatens anyone who dissents.
There is plenty to criticize the left for but they take out their own trash, often to their detriment. Al Franken for example lost his seat over a dumb pic of his hover hands.
Meanwhile the right will protect the same behavior, circle the wagons, and actually normalize bad behavior just like this most recent example
Hillary Clinton testified for over eight hours on the embassy attack years ago. When will the right even allow their people to take the stand?
There need to be hearing about this Signal leak. How much do you want to bet this will ever happen?
Signed an independent whose just stating that fact.
Will there ever be a moderate who champions all people coming together and living their lives peacefully. It's a pipe dream but that's what this independent seeks and is tired of the division of the United States!
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
> Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
I think you know this, it's just that you probably want all those things because, ding ding, you're a fascist.
Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition. You can’t just call all your political opponents fascists. We’re kinda over that by now.
To be fair, as I read this I expected the punchline to be "this admin checks all the boxes" and not "I don't see it". Which is not to say that you're wrong, but it's not the dunk that you picture it as being
"populist political philosophy, movement, or regime" > appeal to populist rethoric, check
"exalts nation above individual" > mass deportations and gov firing, "means justify the ends", check
"centralized autocratic headed by dictatorial leader" > executive orders, disregard for federal laws, DOGE, check
"economic and social regimentation" > "nationalists" vs left, woke or whatever it is this week, check
"forcible suppression of opposition" > no-process deportations, name-calling opposition, incentives to war against neighboors, check
It's all fascism MO; you probably learned fascism in school by only learning the last days and steps before WWII, not how it started.
I mean, "America First" is even openly their slogan.
Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
A lot of people have a really big problem footing the welfare bill required to sustain that type of policy.
The way I see it, it was incredibly irresponsible for the Biden administration to import a bunch of people without strong legal protections for their residency here. I mean seriously wtf. If your policy is “import immigrant labor” then at least do it legally. Otherwise you only have yourself to blame when reasonable people start asking questions.
Not all nationalism is fascism, but fascism is nationalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
"Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement..."
> Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
Yeah, that's how it tends to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
Your definition is a fine one; I can agree on that as terminology.
> I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition.
… I read that same definition, yet I cannot see which part you do not think he fits. Piece by piece:
> that exalts nation
Lit. MAGA, that anyone in his administration that is against him should be out (suppression of individual thought in favor of singular national identity), threats toward taking Greenland, Panama; most of the race stuff below ties in indirectly here too. Criticism of globalization. A general view of American exceptionalism and not "America is great because we're free (and that we show the world the power of what a free democracy is capable of)" but rather more "America is great because it is America." Christian nationalism ("I really believe it’s the biggest thing missing from this country, the biggest thing missing. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country."; the GOP is in favor of the destruction of 1A's church/state separation, in order to promote Christianity.)
> and often race
His policies towards immigrants; the party's overtly and directly racist comments on numerous occasions (e.g., the Springfield lies told at the national debate, or the "poisoning the blood of our country" comments); sending alleged gang-member immigrants to a concentration camp…
(I'd extend this to include "women", too; it's fundamentally the same problem: people who are members of certain groups are "lesser" than others.)
> above the individual
Again, suppression of individual critical thought within his own administration; the party's desire to ban books, freedom of expression, and basic human rights for minority groups.
> that is associated with a centralized autocratic government
Trump has stated numerous times that he believes the Presidency has full, unconditional power, even above that of the other branches of government, and has demonstrated plain contempt for both the legislative branch (e.g., destruction of legislatively-mandated departments) and the judicial branch (lies about "radical judges", threats to impeach judges he disagrees with).
> headed by a dictatorial leader
Literally, he's referred to himself as "dictator", and "king". His party has equated him to an emperor (CPAC, dipicting Trump as Caesar). "Third term and beyond".
> severe economic and social regimentation
Suppression of LGBTQ+ people, women, Vance's comments regarding women…
> and by forcible suppression of opposition
The attempted coup.
Threats to fire anyone in the executive who isn't 100% going to lick the boot, threats to impeach judges, kidnapping of protestors, threats towards journalists…
Every single word in the definition you've provided fits.
Or, less dramatic, a drive for national autarky. A very much dirigiste economy. (Cf. massive tariffs). A drive towards a one-party state without a rule of law - explicitly punishing people with dissenting viewpoints to the point of economic exclusion. (Columbia. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton. Jenner & Block).
Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278...
"While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time."
That's the official position of the US government, in a court filing - that some of those deported did not have a criminal record.
(Even their membership in the org is an assertion/allegation, not one that's been proven in court.)
Which is a fundamental element of, at the very least, autocracies.
>>forcible suppression of opposition
There's the revocation of citizenship, the deporting people to foreign jails without full due process, crackdowns on protestors generally, opposition to trans existence. Do you want links to where this has happened or can we agree these are actions and policy the state has taken recently?
>>subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation
"We need an economic reset, so don't worry about the inflation", DOGE cutting services, tariffs as a means to...whatever the fuck the tariffs are supposed to fix?
So far the people in power have not used violence to suppress opposition. They have not promoted one ethnicity or race above others. They have not made trump a dictator. Trumps authority has remained scoped to the executive office of the government…
I mean come on. Just because the party in power across the board is effective at pushing policies you don’t fully agree with does not a fascist regime make.
Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse. These aren’t new soundbytes. Everyone is just up in arms when it’s not their party getting shit done.
Forcible deportation for opposing views is exactly use of violence to suppress dissent.
> Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse.
And none of them have usurped Congressional spending power and mass violated civil service protections in law using that has a pretext, until the present Administration.
It is extremely disingenuous to redirect from the controversial action to the less controversial pretext here.
No, it factually wasn't, though all opposition to the Israeli polciy of genocide is being characterized that way to justify it.
Which dictionary?
Oxford (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...) and Collins (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/fasc...) say right-wing.
I mean what actually is the outrage here? I do not see it. I see patriots trying to defend taxpayer interests. Taxpayers are the in group. That’s not racist or ethnic. It’s nationalist. Defending its citizens is what nations do. Since when is that equal to fascism?
"That's why I voted for the guy who added 1/3 of it in just four out of ~250 years!"
(And plans to do it again. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce81g9593dro)
Yikes.
> Taxpayers are the in group.
The in-group is right-wingers, such as farmers[1] and Likud[2].
[1] https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/03/...
https://www.keene.edu/academics/cchgs/resources/presentation...
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
" In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?
Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
I mean, if something is imaginable, there's a chance it is indeed so, but still - this would be on a whole other level.
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
"Good enough for me!"
If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it for history?
When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.
Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.
The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.
Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal implications of using a self-destructing messaging channel.
So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".
And Signal is not an approved app afaik.
The whole thing just seems like it is highly likely it is fake/engineered.
Signal is uncompromised.
…at least at the moment.
Or of course, that’s what they want you to think :D
Why? Why not stay in the group indefinitely (or until found) and write stories sourced from a mysterious individual deep in the entrails of the Trump administration? That would have been absolutely specacular and could have resulted in a hilarious purge while the culprits searched in vain for a traitor in their ranks.
He exited and correctly disclosed himself as a victim of being unknowingly added. This is exactly what anyone who values the rest of their life should do.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-admin-...
Most likely scenario he decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of traitors.
It seems least likely that the journalist was accidentally included. The question is why? Seems like our defense personnel are now foreign agents acting against the US.
..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
[Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
-From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff-
But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal
So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially.
Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling.
A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems.
Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)
(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to daddy when they are in trouble next time.
The lack of reproducible builds for Signal’s apps has been a topic of discussion for quite some time:
except that the conversation in question, and similar such conversations, are required by federal law to be archived.
So explicitly choosing a communication channel that violates federal law for conducting federal business is, umm, sketchy?
That is some seriously selective memory
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4cdmmc/wtf_is_going_on...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4dvoj5/sma_diplosleade...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4f3epd/a_different_kin...
And here's some more recent ones
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1f6t1vw/your_relays_ar...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1g3p232/alcoholic_sata...
Major alliance infrastructure and security is probably better than most US corporations but doesn't come close to secure government systems, obviously
Point taken though , the commenters who said that were ...obviously..anecdotal, -though possibly still more the norm...)
> At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
Oh who am I kidding.
Less than 8h later: “it’s just an oopsie right? No harm no foul- nothing to see here folks” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/24/congress/mi...
Oh, much worse than that. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904309995019411933
Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against the "discredited, so-called journalist".
Of course, we don't live in that world.
I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole qualification for applicants for important positions in any organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss other important data points: for example, if they can use messaging apps correctly.
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” - Waltz
“Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is,” -Rubio
Simply incredible. This is wild.
Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date.
It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the actual strategizing.
The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.
This administration looks bad from the outside but through this leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
Typically these positions are filled by highly qualified people with decades of experience.
This administration is not typical. They deliberately chose inexperienced people who would be loyal above all else.
Selecting for incompetence was part of the plan, and it’s been obvious from the start.
Hegseth was a Fox News host, not someone qualified for this position.
This story is stranger than fiction.
I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on the current administration don’t really cause as much as a raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn’t just resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something despicable to both camps.
Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.
What are you basing this on?
History.
Are you genuinely incredulous?
A govvie with status doing the same? A slap on the wrist.
Embarrassing.
But the rest of the military/DOD/ABCD/USAID is legacy bloat left over from the cold war and should be cut. Then we can finally get rid of the income tax for most if not all of the country.
Edit: I say this as an independent who does not support either "side".
If literally storming your government building, threating your representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable any more what is?
To anyone, I recommend you give this a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
Hunter never worked in the Biden Admin though, so it is completely irrelevant.
When I ask the same questions in a more Republican focussed community, it's interestingly not the opposite. The Republicans don't seem to censor people that are critical about them, but they rather respond to it in a mature and factual way. I find that interesting.
It's not linked from the homepage though.
[Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
number 30 is 38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
number 7 is 13 points | 3 comments
This one has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is neither on the first or second page.
What is the logic?
The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang, if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off flagging for this submission which would likely bring it back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't know this yet.
In other words, just because such a system could be used in this way, is it good that it is being used this way? That’s the energy this is coming from.
But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of us are stupid - we should already know.
What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin. The quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
Have any of these topics managed to be censored via flagging?
They are all still present, a good many are still active .. you seem to equate "not on front page" with "censored".
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
and (for example DOGE, last month): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.
The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.
Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.
For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.
But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the SLS rocket. It's all politics.
Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue for the US or international community of the site.
'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are tired of this crap.
I'd much prefer it be replaced by something led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those other regions...
If anything it'll be from some middle ground in that it will originate from a country like Estonia that has a lot going on with startups and the whole digital democracy thing figured out.
I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time greats, but there are lots of different moderation arrangements that can work, and different goals for forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this forum.
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping.
I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way. "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case for it. This happens all the time.
And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics
Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again, you can make the case for changing that but it seems pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and many HN participants are here because this one is slightly less yelly.
Like c'mon.
I'm pretty sure that your pretentiousness just invited a shitstorm of people who are going to flag your posts from now on.
You have about, well, 30 comments in this thread.
One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you
They took their precious time and explained it just for me? I thought you said "We're just flagging and getting on with our day."
You might want to (looks around) and count up your, well, comments. Seems like you're trying to claim both not caring at all and benevolent enlightenment, which is, well, a little self righteous.
These don't seem to have any relevance to what I've said, are you getting me mixed up with someone else?
Admittedly I have little talent for extracting wasps from stings in flight.
Now I guess, should this be made transparent?
No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(This is not a comment on the current story, or any story.)
As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.
Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.
Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.
Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
No, they can't.
> And have it on the record who votes against it.
They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as close as they can come.
Democrats can introduce bills of impeachment, but those would simply die without consideration given GOP control of the House. So far as I'm aware, none have done so since 20 Jan 2025.
There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).
The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.
the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).
the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.
This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.
> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics
Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.
i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc, though. in federal politics sure but in local politics they're more active and there's much more alignment with Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
do you have anything of substance to share, or is this what passes for intellectual discourse on HN these days?
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...
This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.
However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?
The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.
So nada.
In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic chance of anything overall better.
The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of course, is not globally objective, which again is key to the problem)
As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.
That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.
"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...
Big difference.
How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?
Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.
Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.
You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.
Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact that it is not legally an appropriate system for what they did.
And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.
I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're effectively committing the same sin as the poster who originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if they're new accounts.
It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.
Also...but her emails!
Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often daily.
The guy is sending plane loads of who-knows-who to a country that they have no association with, based upon zero charges or due process, where they are imprisoned into basically slavery. This is so outrageously beyond the pale illegal, both in US and international law, that it is just mind-blowing, but it's just another day. Good god. Despotic, banana-republic autocrat behaviour is now just...accepted.
I saw a complaint by a right wing figure noting the increased number of injunctions Trump has received versus prior presidents. Instead of rationally thinking "gosh...maybe he shouldn't contravene the constitution and/or break laws so frequently", they actually think it's unfair and needs to be balanced. It's a shocking collapse of norms or reason.
It is incredibly dark times.
It’s not that weird when you consider where they get that opinion.
But Democrat engagement was somehow negative marginally higher, at huge expense by independent voters.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250114165808/https://projects....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_president...
Directionality is short term and simplistic, Does it change how someone will vote or poll.
Substance explains why they vote or poll, and is relevant because it has downstream consequences in an evolving world.
Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.
Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
BUTTERY MALES indeed.
Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
Good examples and I believe that’s a Bill-Clinton-under-oath use of carnal “is”. Nobody has the patience to wonder whether it’s true or false that Trump knows of the existence of Putin. Bill Clinton didn’t get away with it, so I’m willing to say this is specific to Trump.
I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported conversation appears to be authentic.
Distorting a "gentle reminder" of a fact (not an argument) into a fallacy is a slime ball move, worthy of the most shameless press operatives; only real difference being that the aforementioned operatives are smart enough to demand a dear price for their shamelessness, whereas anigbrowl does it for free!
edit: and to answer ipython since i've been rate limited:
As previously stated, it was not an argument, but a fact, and a signpost to the "Jeff Goldberg is a POS" monument, commonly referred to as his wikipedia page.
My point about fallacies was that there were a lot of people advocating for the Iraq war at the time, it's ridiculous to argue that it was caused by one article written by Goldberg. Your original post was not a 'gentle reminder', it was a simplistic attack that distracted from the topic. If you had made the same point without the drama I would have had no disagreement.
As for the present business... Is anything in that text chain a surprise to you? I think everyone knows who these people are, what they are capable of: Ivy-leaguers who graduated to mass-murder--just like every other administration. "The People" will not tolerate anything less. Team Blue will howl that Team Red's mass-murderers are 2nd-rate. Team Red will shrug. Nothing will change. Neither side really cares about the mass-murder, as long as their bellies are full, and the correct opinions on women's restrooms are upheld.
I don't even remember Goldberg or anything he wrote about it, fwiw.
Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg "one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq," saying Goldberg had "compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact".
Greenwald's assessment harmonizes with personal experience.
> Is this the same Jeff Goldberg who lied us into the Iraq War?
Does not mean "we should doubt this article" but actually means
> I think everyone involved in the Iraq mess should have been civically un-personed decades ago. They should be limited to unclean jobs, and be required to walk a few steps behind their un-tainted betters. Yet as the Osho once said, "the people are retarded," so the architects of that catastrophe still have jobs. I will not waste any opportunity to remind people of what they did. The children do not understand how badly their futures have been diminished by this shedding of innocent blood.
My mistake.
A simple question is sufficient to direct intelligent people to his wikipedia. That is enough.
* Signal isn't an approved communications method for national security information at all.
* Who is this extra person on this chat? (and Hegseth wasn't even the one who added him apparently.)
* Having the only record [1] of this be auto deleting definitively violates the Federal Records Act (even if signal were an approved platform).
This is about group malfeasance and normalization of deviance.
[1] I don't know that part for certain, but I do suspect it...
It's actually weird we don't see this in the corporate world either. These problems, as many of us know personally, exist everywhere, not just at the White House and it's going to lead to huge issues down the road.
Anyone here know if the DoD actually has their own stuff for this? It was they who came up with these technologies back in the rainbow books days.
Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?
But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto crowd after all.
If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted with all messages and contacts
That's not editorializing, because it's using the article's own language and is a more accurate and neutral description of the article. Editorializing is when a submitter takes advantage of the title field to convey their own view of an article.
This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking.
A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it does today. Over time, this is where we’ve come to.
Suppressing my own like/dislike responses is where most of my energy goes when doing this job.
> Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,”
This is not in question, at all.
Going through the reporting a couple of times it could very well be that he was never part of the group. Screenshots of the group members including him or a screen recording nowhere to see. He didn’t write anything in the group but immediately wrote each individual after he left the group.
If he never was in the group and only received intel about it, the people which provided him with the intel would be able to tell him that critical information was posted in the group, which was accurate, but he wouldn’t have seen it.
I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.
