Top government officials including Defense of Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Vice President of the United States JD Vance unintentionally leaked highly classified details to bomb the Houthi Group in Yemen. The Houthis are an Iranian-backed rebel group in Yemen that has attacked ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for more than a year, threatening maritime trade. The Houthis have used the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas to justify their attacks. The president said last week that he considered Iran to be behind the attacks and warned that the country would “suffer the consequences” of additional strikes. 

The person who was accidentally added to this group chat was Jeffery Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic. When Goldberg was first added to this strange group chat, his initial thought was that it was a fake group chat that was trying to spread misinformation, or play a joke on him as a journalist. The idea that top secret information like actual bomb plans were being discussed in an unsecure group text was unheard of and could never be true. However, his theory was quickly proven wrong as bombs started to drop in Yemen the second that group chat started blowing up with texts. 

This group chat was full of plans that included confidential information like the weapon packages, targets, and timings of the exact attack right before it took place. It also consisted of highly ranked government authorities, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine representative Steve Witkoff. The attack on Yemen commenced at 1:45 pm.

At around 2:29 pm, President Donald Trump posted a message on Truth Social to reveal the attack, stating that “The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.” Soon after the group chat fiasco, Goldberg publishes an article to The Atlantic, listing the events that he had witnessed, along with screenshots of the messages being sent to prove his point. In fact, the title of this article is one of the many messages sent by Pete Hegseth, excitedly expressing his happiness with the success of the attack. With this article being posted, Trump commented “I don’t know anything about it, I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it.” Other officials in the White House stated their confidence in Trump’s National Security team, and the National Security advisor, Mike Waltz, has “learned his lesson and is a good man.” 

This issue is not as simple as sending the wrong message to a person, these are actual war plans being sent to civilians. The Trump administration’s use of a private, unsecured messaging app (Signal) to discuss sensitive military plans, including attack details and timing, was a serious breach of security and protocol, potentially endangering American lives and undermining national security.