This is the first of the Daily Reports—in time, I’d like these to just be brief daily updates, but going in, there is a little bit of backfill to catch up on. Too much has happened too fast to catch up on everything, but these first few will discuss some ongoing stories before it just switches to daily updates. 

JD Vance seemed to think the timing of the Houthi strike was not right. He noted that 40% of European trade runs through the Suez Canal which could be threatened by the strike. And Vance believed that would be inconsistent with the message Trump was trying to send to Europe at this time. He believed this was a strong argument for delaying the strike for a month. Some pundits have taken this to mean that Vance didn’t think Trump knew what he was doing, but that assessment appears to be a bit strong.  Some of the others at the meeting appeared to be ok with delaying the timeline, but John Radcliff, the CIA director said that he would prefer to go ahead with the mission. One concern he raised, interestingly, was that in the delay, their plans could leak—which did, in fact happen, albeit after the strike had taken place. 

Earlier—before giving his go ahead—Radcliff reviewed reasons for the strike which appear to be talking points. He said “…we need to stay focused on 1. Biden failed 2. Iran funded.” Both of his points do not appear to be strategic military points, but instead, ways to sell the strike to the public. 

There was more discussion on the shipping lanes that carry mostly European goods, with Michael Waltz, the President ‘s National Security Advisor saying “From a messaging standpoint we absolutely ad this to the list of horribles on why the Europeans must invest in their defense.” Could he have been suggesting that a justification for the airstrike was to intentionally put stress on European shipping as an ongoing campaign to convince or force the Europeans to pay more for defense. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, later joined in on this line of conversation. He said to Vance, “I share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” 

Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff weighed in on the topic of European responsibility, suggested that if the US restores freedom of navigation “at great cost” [then] “some further economic gain must be extracted.” 

The next part of the chat has Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, revealing the specific details of the strike: The times the F-18s will launch, the time of the drone strikes. The time of the first of these messages is 12:15 et. There is no time stamp, but the next message says that a building collapsed, and there were multiple positive IDs. Next there are some joyous congratulations being passed amongst the various participants. Hegseth then says more strikes will be going on into the night. Were these really “war plans” they discussed? It is hard to imagine that mentioning the specific aircraft that were taking off at the very time they were actually taking off would give anyone actionable plans they could use to harm the US or be used to defend themselves.

So that’s the chat. What assessment can we make. 

1. Security. The Signal chat is supposed to offer end-to-end encryption which makes it very secure, and so far, there has been no report of it being hacked. However, it is an app that sits on a phone. Phones can be hacked and frequently are. So is using any chat app on a phone ever a good idea for national security? 

2. Were war plans discussed? There is some discrepancy over that one. Certainly, the details of a military operation could be considered war plans. But on the other hand, it appears that these plans were not discussed until almost the moment they were implemented. Even if someone had intercepted these plans, it appears they would have had mere micro-seconds to make use of the information. Does this mean it was a good idea to discuss military operations on a chat network.  No, probably not. 

3. This one might be a continuation of #1. How did a journalist end up being included in this chat? This also dovetails with whether it is a good idea to have chats on apps that are on phones. Mistakes like this can be made. I am sure National Security advisor Mike Waltz did not mean to include Goldberg, the journalist, in the chat. Waltz has claimed he did not have Goldberg’s contact information, and he did not know how he got into the chat. The second assertion is a little easier to believe than the first claim. Clearly, we can’t know for sure, but it seems feasible and logical that the number of the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic would have had contact with Waltz before. Although Waltz disputes it, Goldberg says that the two of them have spoken before. Looking over the credentials of both men—journalism for Goldberg and politics for Waltz—it seems highly likely that the two of these people would have crossed each other enough for Goldberg’s number to end up on Waltz’s phone. Of course, we can’t prove it as we only have Goldberg’s word and Waltz’s denial. We just know that a mistake was made that could give us pause.