I suspect the Goldberg leak is the work of a disgruntled team member

[HereForTheParty]

How could patching in Goldberg by accident be possible? Why would Goldberg's contact information be anywhere near all of this? Seems very unlikely. A Fox "journalist", maybe. But not Goldberg.

On the other hand, one of the support team may have relished the idea of embarrassing the administration and was able to do so because of the incompetence of other members and the participants themselves.

Thoughts?

[Irish_Dem]

1. I suspect something along these lines.

Incompetence is there for sure.
And criminality.

Someone let it happen, or nudged it along.

The Trump crime syndicate is making many many angry enemies.

[wnylib]

15. The more enemies they get, the bettter.

[Think. Again.]

2. I suspect our country is being run by idiots.

Edit to add:

On second thought, I'm beginning to believe this was done knowingly and deliberately for some nefarious reason.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Clearly, they are idiots

And you know how they think... "Goldberg, Goldstein, Goldwitz... what's the diff?"

[Iggo]

4. Nah, it's because they're stupid.

[Torchlight]

6. I'm wholly alien to Signal and its interface, options, etc.

But I will never underestimate the power of the stupidest guy in the room to bring an entirely new level of "what in the utter hell...?" to any program.

I work(ed) in the same building with the least intelligent person I've ever met (after the age of 12), and he managed to 'accidently' (and yeah, it really turned out to be an accident) delete 2 terabytes of critical data, as well as both backups, and all in the same day.

My guess is incompetence over guile in this instance.

[Wiz Imp]

7. Strongly disagree. It's simple gross incompetence.

It's already been confirmed that Mike Waltz invited Goldberg into the chat. No way did he do that on purpose. I'm guessing there was another person with initials jg* who was supposed to be invited, but Waltz wasn't paying attention and invited the wrong person.

*Jameson Greer, US Trade Representative was likely who was supposed to be invited. Greer apparently often attends National Security Council meetings.

[ecstatic]

8. nah. Hegseth is using unapproved chat messaging apps, and he allowed the app to access his phone's contacts.

It's clear that he's being sloppy about things. It's probably not the first time either. If anyone were to do a deep dive, there are probably other messages that include friends and family members along with generals and CIA chiefs.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. "How could patching in Goldberg by accident be possible?"

It ain’t that deep. When you create a group chat, your. Contacts show up alphabetically and in some cases only by initials. So it’s easy to add JG Jeffrey Goldberg when you really meant JG Jamieson Greer.

[HereForTheParty]

13. Would one of these participants have Goldberg as a contact?

Whether we're talking personal phones or the highest level of secured communications - I wouldn't think so.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. Why not?

[pnwest]

10. I suspect someone had a similarly named contact in their phone,

and just picked the wrong person. Just plain, old-fashioned dumbassery.

[Prairie Gates]

11. I suspect you're wrong, and that they really are that fucking stupid

Why make an inference that depends on their competence when all the evidence is against it? Not one of them noticed that he was on the chat either.

[MurrayDelph]

12. I think it was a deadly combination of

Dunning Kruger Stupidity,
Major Hubris,
Desire to not be trackable, and
Autocorrect

[JHB]

16. I'm more inclined to believe "autofill error", part of a name typed and automatically filled in with the wrong guy...

...and the person typing didn't notice who was actually added, thus not fixing it.

That's the usual way internal conversations go to the wrong people, at least in my (nongovernmental and non-security-related) experience.

[lame54]

17. Incompetence all the way...

Pick the worst people for the most important jobs.
It will inevitably go wrong