Why is the US group chat on Houthi attack plans so concerning? A military operations expert explains
- Written by Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Fellow, Naval Studies at UNSW Canberra, and Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University
A report[1] in The Atlantic today sent shockwaves through Washington and beyond: senior US officials shared military operations for a bombing campaign[2] against Houthi rebels in Yemen in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included the magazine’s editor.
Military planning of this nature is highly classified, which is why some media outlets are characterising it[3] as “an extraordinary breach of American national security intelligence”.
Here are three key reasons why this incident is so concerning, and how such conversations are typically handled.
What are the potential consequences of this kind of breach?
From an operational and strategic level, this incident could have had significant implications.
Had the Houthis or their Iranian backers managed to access this information, they could have moved the individuals or equipment that was being targeted, making the strikes ineffective.
In addition, depending on what military assets the US was using to conduct the strikes – for example, ships and aircraft – the information could have given away their positions. This could have allowed the Houthis to pre-emptively target these assets, which is another significant concern.
Or, the Houthis could have pre-emptively attacked something else, such as oil facilities in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which they have targeted successfully[4] in the past.
At the strategic level, this breach provides an insight into the dynamics of the people involved in the key defence decision-making in the Trump administration. Many names were reportedly shared, including an active intelligence officer.
If America’s adversaries were able to access this information, they could use it to target these people or people around them.
More broadly, this incident is just a bad look. This is a classified discussion about military planning being conducted on an unclassified platform that was accessed by a journalist who didn’t have high-level clearances and shouldn’t have had access to the information.
How are classified conversations usually conducted?
During my time in the Australian Defence Force, I was a former director of operations of a 38-nation coalition of maritime forces in the Middle East.
And I was quite surprised to see these US plans being discussed on Signal.
Normally, operations of this kind are discussed strictly on secure, classified devices only, such as phones or laptops. Military commanders are contactable on these devices at all hours of the day or night.
These devices are “cleaned” before they’re issued by the Department of Defence and regularly checked. You can’t plug a foreign device into them, which ensures they can’t be compromised in any way. Any communications that take place on these devices would also be encrypted.
In addition, on a classified network, it would be impossible to add someone to a conversation in the way the Atlantic editor was, unless they had access to the same secure technology.
I would be highly surprised if the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, and the national security advisor, Mike Waltz, do not have access to these devices. They may have chosen to have this conversation on Signal for ease, but it clearly makes the information much more vulnerable.
If high-level conversations do need to happen on an unclassified platform like Signal, the participants would normally use a code word that doesn’t give away what they’re talking about. This keeps a conversation encrypted to a degree until a secure device can be accessed.
Should America’s allies worry about intelligence lapses, too?
The US’ key partners and allies should seek to have a conversation with the Americans behind closed doors to understand the context of what happened.
The big questions are: what does this kind of lapse mean and what is the US doing to address it?
The US National Security Council has already said[5] it intends to look at the situation in depth.
So, at this stage, I don’t think America’s Five Eyes partners should necessarily be concerned about the potential for other intelligence breaches.
References
- ^ report (www.theatlantic.com)
- ^ bombing campaign (apnews.com)
- ^ characterising it (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ targeted successfully (www.aljazeera.com)
- ^ already said (www.nbcnews.com)
Authors: Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Fellow, Naval Studies at UNSW Canberra, and Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University
