Minutes before the United States launched a deadly missile campaign in Yemen that reportedly killed 53 people and wounded 89, including multiple children, on March 15, the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was sitting in his car in a grocery store parking lot waiting for the attack.
The story is now well-known and well-memed: Days before the missile barrage, Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat called “Houthi PC small group” after President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Waltz, invited him to connect on the encrypted message application. The editor was included in the discussion inadvertently, a spokesperson for the National Security Council acknowledged to the Atlantic.
Military security (or military grade whatever) is a buzzword that makes sense in some contexts. In a lot of them, it doesn’t.
For example, for a lot of military-grade products you can have assumptions that are not always given for a platform that messenger operate on. Like that the device is always stored in a secure location. That it’s administered by trained personnel. That the device operator has received training on proper usage etc. In fact, a lot of military systems probably couldn’t be operated securely in a John Doe context b because of environmental security requirements. In that regard, messengers have to be more secure.