There’s disbelief around the world after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat in which US officials were planning military strikes. Messages include JD Vance and Pete Hegseth bluntly criticising Europe. Listen to the Trump 100 podcast as you scroll.
Tuesday 25 March 2025 23:01, UK
Live reporting by Kieren Williams
There were 18 people in the group chat that planned the US airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen this month.
Many of those members were the most senior officials in the Trump administration – and, of course, a journalist who spilled the group’s secrets.
So who was in the chat? Here’s a full breakdown…
It has been an extraordinary day in the US as Washington reels from a security breach Trump’s team is trying to downplay.
Here are some of the best images from the day:
Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has written to Donald Trump, urging him to sack Pete Hegseth.
The Democrat described Hegseth as “the most unqualified Secretary of Defence in American history” in a short letter.
Read his letter in full below:
“Dear President Trump:
“Pete Hegseth is the most unqualified Secretary of Defence in American history.
“His continued presence in the top position of leadership at the Pentagon threatens the nation’s security and puts our brave men and women in uniform throughout the world in danger.
“The so-called Secretary of Defence recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans – including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets and the weapons to be used – during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter.
“His behaviour shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.
“Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth should be fired immediately.
“Sincerely,
“Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Leader.”
The Pentagon reportedly warned of a known vulnerability on the Signal chat app, in an email sent out prior to the publication of The Atlantic article, our US partner network NBC News reports.
The memo was sent in a department-wide email, NBC said, citing two defence officials.
It reported the email said: “Russia-aligned threat groups are actively targeting the Signal Messenger application of individuals likely to exchange sensitive military and government communications related to the war in Ukraine.”
Employees were told the vulnerability could be mitigated by updating to the latest version of the app and applying proper settings.
The email added that Google’s threat intelligence team released a report last month that highlighted Russia-linked groups using a Signal QR code to link a malicious actor’s phone to another device.
This, it was reported, allowed the messages of the linked phone to be read.
NSA guidance was also shared in the warning, NBC reported.
It warned Signal was vulnerable to spying and hacking by Russian groups.
“This allows the group to view every message sent by the unwitting user in real time, bypassing the end-to-end encryption,” it was reported the guidance said.
Watch Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke discuss the breach in the video below:
Members of the Senate committee that some have called on to investigate the security breach are weighing up their next steps.
We reported previously on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Democrats, reported in our 19.30 post, said they wanted the committee to lead the investigation.
And Senate majority leader John Thune said he “suspects” the committee may hold hearings over the security breach – but stopped short of confirming it was taking place.
Sky News’ US partner NBC News reported on members of the committee weighing up their next steps.
Senator Jack Reed, the committee’s ranking member, told NBC he wants Pete Hegseth to testify about the Signal chat.
“Also, it would reaffirm his assertions that there was nothing unusual or inappropriate about the conversation,” he added.
The committee’s chair senator Roger Wicker said no decision had been made on a path forward.
Reed said getting a copy of the Signal chat was a priority for Democrats.
“There is no legitimate basis for him to withhold information from the committee that he claims is unclassified and has already been shared with a journalist,” he said.
Other members of the Intelligence Committee also said they would like to see copies of the group.
Just to bring you a bit of news from Trump’s comments earlier.
He was speaking during an executive order signing.
When asked about comments that Europe was freeloading, Trump asked if the journalist really wanted an answer.
He then went on: “Europe has been freeloading.
“The EU has been freeloading us on trade, it’s terrible. Absolutely terrible.
“I don’t blame Europe for this … I blame Biden.”
A former senior director of the White House Situation Room has said the security breach “boggles the mind”.
The World With Yalda Hakim is bringing us more response and analysis of the biggest story out the US today.
Larry Pfeiffer served as former senior director of the White House Situation Room under Barack Obama.
Speaking to Sky News, he described how they had developed a range of “secure communication devices” to let the US government’s most senior discuss sensitive information.
“It’s with them 24/7 … they have it everywhere,” he said.
Speaking from Maryland, he added: “It boggles the mind as to why they would have made this conscious decision to put these conversations onto a non-government platform like Signal.”
Trump sets the tone
He went on to add that Trump set the tone for a “laissez-faire” attitude to handling classified material in his previous term.
“I can see where people under him might decide to cut corners.”
In US security news, adjacent to the breach, vice president JD Vance has said he’s going to join his wife on a visit to Greenland.
Once upon a time, this trip would have been unremarkable.
But it comes as President Donald Trump has made repeated overtures to wanting to annex Greenland.
In a post on social media, Vance said: “Looking forward to visiting Greenland on Friday.
“A lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada, and of course, to threaten the people of Greenland.
“So we are going to check out how things are going there.
“Unfortunately, leaders in both America and in Denmark, I think, ignored Greenland for far too long.”
Watch the VP speak below:
For context:
Trump previously said he thinks the US will annex Greenland.
During an Oval Office meeting with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte earlier this month, he was asked about his hopes to take the land.
“I think that will happen,” he said. “I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man who could be very instrumental.
“You know Mark, we need that for international security.
“We have a lot of our favourite players cruising around the coast and we have to be careful.”
Greenland has been controlled by Denmark for centuries, first as a colony, then as a semi-sovereign territory.
It is subject to the Danish constitution, meaning any change to its legal status would require a constitutional amendment.
A US delegation was already visiting Greenland and a US military base there.
The group includes Usha Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz.
They’re there from Thursday to Saturday.
A top Republican has claimed an investigation into the security breach is “already happening”.
There has been no official announcement of any investigation yet, even with Donald Trump speaking earlier this evening.
But Senate majority leader John Thune said he “suspects” the Senate Armed Services Committee may hold hearings over the security breach.
Thune added that the committee may have national security officials who were involved in the Signal group testify in front of it.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is the body that Democrats, whom we reported on at 19.30, called to lead an investigation.
Thune told reporters: “I suspect the Armed Services Committee may want to have some folks testify and have some questions answered as well.
“I think everybody has acknowledged, including the White House, that, yeah, mistakes were made, and what we want to do is make sure that something like that doesn’t happen again.”
For context:
The White House has mostly attacked the journalist responsible for the original story – rather than admit to serious culpability in the issue.
His integrity has been repeatedly called into question.
While we knew the security breach was being looked into by the White House, there has been no official investigation announced.
By Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor
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 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, too, 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 United States are as strong as ever.
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.
Watch: A recap on the US strikes on Houthis
Hegseth’s jaw-dropping mistake could have put lives at risk
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 in Yemen is bad enough.
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.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment of all was the decision by Pete Hegseth, the US 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.
‘I’d be fired immediately’ – former British minister
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”?
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!”
Security scandals don’t help US – or Trump
Ensuring operational and personnel security is paramount for any military plan.
It is why the UK and – previously – the United States, 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.
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 President Trump’s interests to help them.
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