Latest news with #Signal-based

Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Should Keep Its Guard Up After ‘Signalgate'

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. writes in 'Leak Scandal Can Be GOP Lemonade' (Business World, March 29) that the high-level Signal-based discussion of an attack on Houthi positions 'didn't endanger U.S. forces.' While that may have been true for this particular attack, the overall assumption is somewhat of a post hoc ergo propter hoc variant. Perhaps we should consult the ghost of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who enjoyed significant success at Pearl Harbor despite U.S. access to some Japanese secret communications. Subsequent U.S. intelligence efforts against those same accesses helped produce the stunning Japanese defeat at Midway seven months later. You never know how enemy factors are combined against your military intentions until it all comes crashing down. As a postscript, it's worth mentioning that further exploitation of Japanese communications led to a U.S. attack on Yamamoto's plane as he was on an inspection tour in 1943. He didn't survive the attack.