What Happens When There’s a Real National Security Crisis?

Opinion|What Happens When There’s a Real National Security Crisis?

Like many who read the Signal chat published by The Atlantic, I was shocked by the reckless negligence of President Trump’s national security team as they communicated highly sensitive details about a pending military operation in Yemen on a commercial app. As a former national security adviser who served almost four years in the same role as Michael Waltz, I was struck by some other things, as well.

Why was the national security adviser doing the tedious administrative work of setting up a chat group that should have been left to his special assistant? Why was Mr. Waltz using Signal rather than the well-established, secure process? How on earth did a journalist get added to the group? Why did none of the principals on the chat raise any concern about classified deliberations and operational details being discussed on an unclassified system? Was this laziness, expedience, habit? Or was it a deliberate effort to keep the conversation outside the proper, legal channels to make sure the conversation would never be revealed?

The first major military action of the new Trump administration unfolded in a negligent and unserious way, and that bodes ill for how it will handle far more complex national security contingencies or, almost inevitably, a major crisis. That should raise alarms. In the same way that the Department of Government Efficiency is moving fast and breaking things, Elon Musk -style — whole agencies, the federal work force, critical programs — so too it appears the national security team is approaching its decision-making recklessly.

The strikes against the Houthis were relatively straightforward. The U.S. military had plans at the ready, prepared under the Biden Administration. Our military is familiar with Yemen after years of action in the region. The decisions to be made were not complex by national security standards.

The Trump administration will likely confront an array of global challenges that would sorely test the most experienced and competent national security team. Imagine war with Iran. A deadly foreign terrorist attack on U.S. soil. A bird flu pandemic with high mortality rates. China blockading or attacking Taiwan. Russia invading a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally. China winning the A.I. race for super-intelligence and putting our economy and security at risk. Each of those contingencies is more than just conceivable. None would be handled responsibly on a Signal text chain littered with frat-boy-quality emojis.

To understand the stakes, let us review how this unfolded. In initiating the text chain on Signal, Mr. Waltz appears to have done little more than request contacts for his cabinet-level counterparts, or the “principals,” so they could be updated easily in anticipation of planned military action. That request by itself was seemingly unclassified (except to the extent that it may have elicited the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative).