If a British defence minister was found to have shared details about a live military operation in an unofficial messaging group with colleagues, they would be sacked.
That President Donald Trump has tried to dismiss the revelation that his top defence and security team not only did just that but accidentally included a journalist in the chat will be watched with deepening horror by US allies and growing glee by American enemies.
In public, the UK government is still insisting security ties with the US are as strong as ever.
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But in private there will doubtless be horror – though perhaps not surprise – within Whitehall at this extraordinary lapse in the most basic operational security by the president’s national security adviser, defence secretary, national intelligence chief and even the boss of the CIA.
Any information about plans to – for example – launch bombing raids against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen would ordinarily only be shared on specially designated government systems that ensure classified information is secure.
The fact that Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, felt it was acceptable to set up a group on the commercial messaging app Signal – which does provide encryption but is only as secure as the device that it is being used on (so not secure at all if a mobile phone or laptop is compromised) – to discuss plans to attack the Houthis is bad enough.
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The subsequent mistaken inclusion of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, is a display of amateurism that simply should not happen among security professionals without serious and immediate consequences.
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But perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment of all was the decision by Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary – also in the chat – to decide it was acceptable to share plans for the strikes, including specific targets, weapons and sequencing.
This kind of information could actually put lives at risk if it fell into the wrong hands.
What must the professional military personnel who carried out the operation be thinking – not only about the careless approach to security by their boss, but also the reaction of their president, who has played down the debacle as a “glitch” and not “a serious one”?
Read more:
Who were officials discussing war plans?
What is the Signal app?
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I asked a former British defence minister what would have happened to him if he had shared operational plans on a Signal chat.
“It just wouldn’t happen,” he said.
“Nobody would be stupid enough to share live operational detail. But if I did, I’d be fired immediately after I’d had the mother of all bollockings from the chief of the defence staff or the chief of joint operations!”
Ensuring operational and personnel security is paramount for any military plan.
It is why the UK and – previously – the US, as well as other members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, have such strict protocols on the classification of material, who can handle what and how intelligence or other information can be distributed.
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Any weakening of these strict standards would potentially allow sloppiness to grow, which increases the chance of further breaches.
Russia, China, Iran and other hostile states already constantly try to access classified material from Western allies to gain an advantage and cause harm.
It can hardly be in Mr Trump’s interests to help them.
