S2 Ep1007: Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Wehner: What's Going on with Our National Security?

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How did Jeffrey Goldberg receive the Trump team's war plans?

I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Tim Miller 0:48
I guess my first note here on the outline is, holy fuck. I want to know, just talk us through, you do this a little bit in the story, but where were you when the signal message from Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, came through and walked me through how you kind of processed what was happening as he invited the entire National Security Team onto the group text with you? Yeah.
Quite randomly, I was in Salzburg, Austria. Let's put that aside. Das 60. Jahrhundert von The Sound of Music, das ist alles, was ich sagen kann. Aber ich war in Salzburg, er hat mich eingeladen, mit ihm zu sprechen. Ich habe ihn, glaube ich, zweimal in meinem Leben getroffen, nicht letztes Jahr, wahrscheinlich ein paar Jahre zuvor. Aber es hat mich nicht als verrückt, ich bin der National-Security-Advisor, ich bin der Editor von einem Magazin, ich lese über National-Security. Wir stimmen wahrscheinlich auch auf viele Dinge zu. Zumindest alle, Mike. Ja. Yeah, well, that's the issue. Marco too, right? You know, I assume that things that come over the transom are fake, but there's no harm in saying to Mike Waltz, yeah, sure, here's my, I accept your message request and I'll find out if it's the real Mike Waltz or not. That happens. A couple of days later, I'm added to the Signal Chat Houthi PC small group with a bunch of names, most of which are spelled out. Some are not.
Some are just initials, but, you know, including the CIA director, the Das ist ein Fake. 100%. Because that doesn't happen. Somebody's setting me up. Well, couldn't you just check to see if it was Mike Waltz's phone number? Like, don't you have his phone? No, I don't want to press any buttons.
Tim Miller 2:23
Right.
You don't want to accidentally leave the chat. Well, no. I assume that this is a state actor or a non-state actor trying to, you know. I mean, and it's obviously more subtle than, this is UPS. You have to give us your social security number unless we're not going to give you your packet. You know, this is some sophisticated thing going on. You know, and Signal in the way it's designed, you can't.

What was Jeffrey Goldberg's initial reaction to the security breach?

very easily, from my limited skills here, very easily see what's going on. Or if the person in the group is not in your phone book, then you can't see who it is. Anyway, I just thought of some weird thing. I get a lot of weird things over the transom, as do you, every day. It's like, alright, we're moving on. And then, over the next couple of days, it gets very, very strange. First, there's a, with a high degree of you know, very similar to, there's a discussion about attacking Yemen and whether they should attack Yemen this weekend. You know, this is already late in the week. And I'm like, well, some AI is very clever at mimicking the policy positions or the ideological proclivities of J.D. Vance. That's interesting. Because J.D.
was the one that was against in the text chain. J.D. was the one who articulated, and by the way, I find this fascinating, and this is the stuff that interests me the most. I find it fascinating that J.D. Vance ist im Chat. Nicht nur sagt er, dass er mit dem Präsidenten entgegenkommt, aber er denkt nicht, dass der Präsident die Veränderungen der Politik versteht. Das ist interessant. Nun, es ist berühmt.
Tim Miller 3:53
Ich dachte, das war auch interessant. Trump versteht das nicht. Er sagt das in einer Schale mit 18 Leuten und dem Editor von The Atlantic.

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