Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies

Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies

As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.

Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability. There are fears that the mounting firings and leak inquiries in Hegseth’s orbit, along with his inability to manage these internal crises, exposes the entire global US war footing – especially, if a geopolitical and external crisis comes across his desk.

“[What if] a foreign entity, whether it be a state actor or non-state actor, is able to intercept the movements of troops or department personnel, or something like that, capture them and hold them to ransom,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and CEO at Task Force Butler. “That kind of thing could very easily happen.”

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    22·
    6 days ago

    Signal encryption is already targeted by Russians and Belarusians trying to compromise it

    So what? So is the NSA and everyone else in the world? You have no evidence that the could or have compromised it at all. Just baseless “oh but it may be compromised some day!”.

    Put another way - Russians and Belorussians are also trying to hack the encryption used by your bank. WHO KNOWS HOW LONG THAT WILL REMAIN SAFE.

    Also, is Hegseth’s phone itself secure, and everyone has communicating with?

    This is the actual issue here - not Signal. Using a personal device with who-knows-what for hardening or even patch management is a significant problem.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
      21·
      6 days ago

      You have no evidence that the could or have compromised it at all. Just baseless “oh but it may be compromised some day!”.

      Yes, that is the point. I have no evidence, nor will I. When Russia hacks it successfully, they aren’t going to put out a press release and give everyone a grace period to move off the app before they start harvesting state secrets are they? You need to act like it is already compromised becuase you don’t know that it isn’t or when it inevitably will be.