The Keystone Cops natsec team

In what could be a attempt to join the Keystone Cops, we have learnt that Trump’s National Security principals set up a private chat channel to discuss a US strike on Yemen, and accidentally added a journalist to it.

This is exactly why you are not meant to use commercial apps for national security discussions. Secure channels don’t allow you to accidentally add on external people such as journalists. They also can be set up to only allow access if you are on a secure connection, or dedicated IP addresses etc.

David French notes:

I’m a former Army JAG officer (an Army lawyer). I’ve helped investigate numerous alleged spillages of classified information, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans, without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.

There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and potential criminal charges.

This is the most interesting aspect of what happened. The total lack of acceptance that anything wrong was done at all. Sure you might not expect resignations, but in any normal government you would have an admission that what happened was wrong, was a stuff up, should not have happened, and they will make sure never happens again. But we now have a culture of never ever admitting fault, so instead they just attack the journalist (who did a better job of protecting classified information than the NSA and SecDef).

The other very interesting aspect was the purely transactional view of J D Vance. He said the US should not be bombing the Houthi, as only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez Canal and 47% of European trade. So he saw Trump’s decision as allowing the Europeans to freeload, and wanted them to somehow pay for it.

First of all, it shows a lack of knowledge (or disinterest) in the fact that having extra costs on European trade, will cost US consumers as US companies then trade with those European businesses. There is a lot of data about how the Houthi attacks have contributed significantly to global inflation.

The second segment is that Vance doesn’t see any value in stopping terrorists from controlling a major sea, just because it is the right thing to do. You gain the impression that in WWII he would have been arguing the US shouldn’t get involved in WWII unless someone paid them to do so.

Vance is even more isolationist than Trump, which suggests that if he wins in 2028 (as is likely), the US foreign policy is unlikely to swing back to traditional allies and values.