Here's My Puzzle On The Signal Chat Kerfuffle

Feeling more and more like an op by neocons to take out Pete and damage JD. Complete and total BS. Now I’m at the point where, fine, you little twits want to dance, let’s dance: Trump should cut pretty much most of NSA and NSC, from the top down, and install Bridge Colby as NSA.… https://t.co/H5SPoDW79z

— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) March 27, 2025

As I often note here, I spent much of my IT career working the nuts and bolts of computer security in both classified and civilian environments. Security works in basic ways across the board, and once you're used to it, it isn't rocket science. Thus I'm a little puzzled when I see this:

Elon Musk is helping lead the investigation into the Signal chat leak involving top national security leaders and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, the White House press secretary said Wednesday.

"The National Security Council, the White House Counsel's Office, and also, yes, Elon Musk's team" will be leading the investigation into the Signal leak, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during Wednesday's White House press conference.

You don't need Elon, DOGE, ot any of those others to figure it out. From everything I read, the Signal app was routinely installed on the phones of national security types above a certain level just in the normal course of business. It was authorized for unclassified communications. That doesn't mean just anyone could join in a chat, there waa an authorization list. The question was how Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg got on the authorization list -- but I would add a second question, how Goldberg got a copy of Signal on his phone that just happened to be tuned in to the national security network.

Think about it. I may have gmail or Outlook installed on my phone, but that doesn't mean I just get random messages from General Motors executives every morning when I check my e-mail. And unless I have something very wrong, neither I nor Jeffrey Goldberg have any reason even to have Signal installed on our phones. If it isn't installed and configured to receive messages from the government, even if I mistakenly got such a message, I wouldn't be able to read it.

Remember, Signal is an end-to-end encryption system. That means when you type in a message, it scrambles it and makes it unreadable unless another Signal system on another phone receives it, knows who sent it, and can unscramble it with a key. Somebody had to install it on Jeffrey Goldberg's phone and set it up so it would know Pete Hegseth was sending a message with a key it would recognize and use to unscramble the message.

So for starters. I would want Jeffrey Goldberg's phone. Goldberg didn't just randomly get that chat out of the blue. This all had to be set up by one or more tech guys. I'd want to talk to the tech guys, too, and since they work for the government and have security clearances, I'd want to talk to them fast. In fact, I'm pretty sure they've already been talked to.

Next, someone else, almost certainly not the same tech guy who installed Signal on Goldberg's phone, had to add Goldberg's ID to the chat. Frankly, this had to have been done at someone's instruction. People like Gabbard, Hegseth, and Waltz don't do their own security administration. Somewhere in the natsec apparatus is a Signal administrator who puts together the chat lists. Somebody with the authority to do this had to have told this guy, "OK, add Jeffrey Goldberg -- yeah, that same guy who's editor of The Atlantic and works for lefty Laurene Powell Jobs, yeah, the same guy we set up to use Signal with the ID we gave him last week -- to the chat list for the Houthi chat."

This is another guy who works for the government, has a security clearance, and will need to explain what happened, or he'll wind up in Club Fed at best. I'm sure he's already been talked to, and in fact, I suspect there's just no mystery here. For whatever reason, things are being kept quiet. And for that matter, Jeffrey Goldberg had to have been aware that Signal was being installed on his phone, why, how to use it, and when to dial in for that chat.

Even if nobody talks -- even if all the techs and admins who had to have been involved in this are rubbed out, whacked, terminated with extrreme prejudice -- the system logs will still have records of everything that was done and who did it. This is all kabuki on both sides. Elon and DOGE know there's no need for them to get involved. I think Politico understands this prety well:

On Wednesday evening — following a brutal day of headlines surrounding the now-infamous Signal chat — Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles and top personnel official Sergio Gor gently offered President Donald Trump some advice in a private meeting.

National security adviser Mike Waltz’s accidental inclusion of a journalist in the chat was creating a major embarrassment for the White House. Perhaps it was time to consider showing him the door, they suggested, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss them.

. . . Despite simmering anger directed at the national security adviser from inside the White House, Waltz still has his job five days after The Atlantic first published its explosive story on the Signal chat. That doesn’t mean he’s safe yet, according to the two people.

In fact, the two allies have heard some administration officials are just waiting for the right time to let him go, eager to be free of the newscycle before making changes.

Accidental my big toe. Too many people had to be involved, and too many records created on too many system logs. This is all kabuki on both sides.