Noise #198: Just do it over a dating app

Music reacting to this week's leak of secret American military plans.

America’s top military, diplomacy, and national security officials recently discussed secret operational plans over the commercial app Signal. They also managed to talk trash about America’s European allies—and inadvertently include Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief for The Atlantic—on the group chat.

From a Politico analysis:

“I guess Signal is a few steps above leaving a copy of your war plan at the Chinese Embassy — but it’s far below the standards required for discussing any elements of a war plan,” said Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Politico’s article says that Signal most often cannot be downloaded onto secure federal devices. This means that personal phones and computers were likely used to discuss operation-critical details. In the words of a former White House official:

“It’s so unbelievable. These guys all have traveling security details to set up secure comms for them, wherever they are. Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”

Data storage security and malware threats are concerns, too—and then there’s that whole "oops, we accidentally included the editor of the Atlantic” thing.

The group chat involved specific operational timeline information that could have endangered the mission, and the lives of American service members. From the New York Times:

Launch times are typically closely guarded to ensure that the targets cannot move into hiding or mount a counterattack at the very moment planes are taking off, when they are potentially vulnerable.

Politico's main interviewee poignantly sums up the situation:

“Forget Signal, just do it over a dating app, you might as well, that would be just as secure as what you’re doing,” the former White House official said.

I recorded Noise #198 reflecting on this amateurish, destructive, and completely avoidable breach of America’s national security. The iconic lyric “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you,” played on repeat in my head, and its melody influenced my playing.

Here’s Noise #198:

Wishing you peace,

Michael

(Noise #198 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.)