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The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
(www.theatlantic.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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This story is so weird that I take it with grain of salt.
Top level personnel added him to a chat. He wrote a piece that otherwise makes them look good (at least mildly competent). Then left the chat.
How does this make them look even mildly competent? They disclosed war plans to an unknown third party by using unsanctioned communication tools. They got lucky it was a reporter who thought he was being baited rather than a more malicious and intentioned actor.
Yeah a lot of reporters would just sit on it then use it as a source.
I think @TingoTenga@lemmy.world is positing the idea that perhaps this was an intentional disclosure. A type of trial balloon, if you will.
That makes no sense at all though, this would be the dumbest way possible to do that. If you're going to leak something you don't include a paper trail of high level people discussing classified information in ways that are neither legal nor secure. And especially to The Atlantic, they would never be the choice if this was intentional for reasons that should be obvious.
I would argue that just like rape is about power, things like this could conceivably be about power as well. Much of the hypocrisy of the right can be boiled down to showing that they can do this and you cannot. We see it as hypocrisy, but it's actually an expression of power. They don't care that we see them as hypocrites, because that's the point, to express their power to do this while the likes of Reality Winner and Jack Teixeira cannot.
What's anyone gonna do about it? Nothing ever happened to Bush for millions of missing emails, nothing happened to Clinton for a foolish private email server, and nothing happened to Trump in his first term when refused to use a secure phone and kept using his normal one. I think it will amount to the same for these people, as well.
I am not pushing back as hard as others on this opinion because I think it's reasonable to be skeptical for a few reasons. I am in the "it was probably a mistake" camp myself, but I can see based on prior behavior from people who are, well, rapists, that it could easily be about showing us what they can get away with as an expression of power.
Ah, I see. I don't think I agree, but I get the statement being made now.
Yeah, I find the "accidental" chat with a journalist too strange to take it at face value.
I know others (including myself, a little) are being dismissive of your position, but the reason I think it is reasonable to be skeptical is because of past examples like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
This lead to massive shakeup of top personnel at CBS and 60 Minutes and ended up either coinciding with or becoming the reason for Dan Rather leaving the network.
Thanks for the response and interesting link. I should have worded my initial comment better, I suppose.
What I am saying it that it may be worth considering that the extraordinary nature of the leak warrants a critical analysis of a possible ulterior motive or furtherance of some other agenda.
What I may be, I don't know.
However, for instance, even more than the leak itself, I find it ultimately more relevant that a very anti-European stance was expressed in the coziness of a "private" chat by the senior most national-security officials of the US.
You're getting down voted on your top level comment, but I wanted to take a second to say I appreciate your back and forth here. I'm more inclined to call this incompetence, but your point that other motives and agendas could be at play is well taken.
True, but it also seems totally plausible that it could be real conversation from a private chat. Seems like a terrible way to leak a message.
Yeah, agreed.
Of course they didn't accidentally add a reporter to their private group chat - that's ridiculous! Obviously it was aliens who added him without them noticing. They have advanced technology to add group members in signal without anyone noticing.
That's a fair cop, but historically the Nazis of yesteryear were actually a lot more disorganized and stupid than we give them credit for, too. I mean, the entire "Master Race" thing is rooted in a deep misunderstanding about how genetics and evolution works on a functional level. Like, it's literally a stupid position to have if you understand actual genetics. They were very stupid in other areas as well.
So, while I understand the hesitance to take it as gospel (heh) I think that history shows us it's quite likely that they really are just this stupid. Chaos is a ladder and all that.
"They are sublimely clever and they're intelligent as well. My indictments of that race are stronger and heavier because they are real."
It would appear this is something they may have argued about a little at the Wannsee Conference...