Military social media is filled with memes about Trump officials’ use of Signal to discuss plans for airstrikes on Yemen.
Is the cure to male loneliness… starting a group text to bomb the Houthis?
That’s one of the sarcastic questions posed in memes blowing up across military-focused social media after top Trump officials used Signal to discuss airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militants — an operational security violation, or OPSEC, almost certain to be career-ending or worse for a rank-and-file soldier.
Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz, and other top officials debated whether to strike Yemen in a group chat that mistakenly included Jeffery Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, who reported on the chaotic exchange. Goldberg reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared an attack plan, including the names of those being targeted, before the airstrikes on the encrypted app — raising concerns this practice could spoil the operation or endanger troops.
A post shared by Kyle Eberly (@sitreps2steercos)
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that «there was no classified information as I understand it», and Waltz added, «We have our legal teams looking at it.»
Signal has been widely used for years throughout lower military levels for communication. But even junior troops with access to top-secret materials, which could include pending missile strikes, have long known that communicating such sensitive details should only be done via government-provided secure lines, like SIPR (secure internet protocol router) email or phone, making the message exchange an intelligence gaffe of preposterous proportions.
